Advanced search features tend to vary from website to website, but there are usually a few things you can count on being in common. In designing our own advanced search we incorporated some of these concepts as well as some of our own in the hopes that you can find what you desire in a relatively straightforward manner.
In reaching this page you have likely already seen the initial search form. At present there are only three fields on that form for you to choose from in defining just what it is you are looking for. You can enter words into either of the Title or Author fields and if you know what Category you wish to search in, you may select that category initially or you may select it while viewing the results of your search.
Sometimes Less is More
One key principle to keep in mind is that if you enter too many words into either the Title or Author fields the search engine will search for items containing ALL of these words and you may well miss the item you are searching for.
Also, our old Point of Sale system only allowed us to enter a maximum of 25 characters for the title of any item. As such many items have a Title that is heavily abbreviated. We already have facilities in place to expand the titles for the website, but with over 50,000 items in inventory this will take some time. However, we don't want to leave our customers without some method of finding what they desire and for that we have created this new advanced search system.
Upon entering search words into either or both of the Title and Author fields we recommend that you start with only the most important words. We have noticed that some customers have entered long phrases into the old system and because of the above-mentioned abbreviations they are not likely to find what they desire.
After entering a few words, hit the "Go" button and you will be presented with a (potentially) large list of results. Near the top of the "Results Page" you will see just how many items the search engine found for you. If this is a large number there are options to cut the list down.
EXAMPLE: You want to find "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban".
If you typed the whole title into the Title field you would not likely find it since first the title is more than 25 characters and would have been abbreviated in the original Point of Sale system.
Fig 1: Search results with no items found.
If you reduced the words entered into the Title field to "Harry Potter Azkaban" you would have a better chance of finding it, but then the potential of human error creeps in and you might eventually discover that whomever entered the title misspelled "Azkaban". If you further reduced the words to just "Harry Potter" you would get a list of every item that Thematic Attic has ever carried relating to the Harry Potter series. This would be a good compromise because it limits the initial list of results to only Harry Potter related items and lets you see how some of the titles have been abbreviated.
Fig 2: Search results for titles with "Harry" and "Potter".
Narrowing the List of Results
First, let's consider how long the list of results is. If the list contains no more than 500 items (this number was chosen based on what we felt was a practical limit, but it may change at a later date), the results will be sorted according to our own relevance algorithm. Otherwise the results will be sorted by title. With items sorted by relevance, there is a better chance that what you are looking for will be near the top of the listed results. If not, or if you have more than 500 results, we can narrow the search in a few different ways.
First, if you know what category the item would be in (i.e. books, videos, borders), you can look for an item on the list that is in the same category, then click on the category for that item.
For example, if we are still looking at the list of "Harry Potter" items and you know that you are only interested in Books, you can look in the category column for the word "Books" and click on that link. The results will then be searched again with this new restriction, "Show me only the books".
Fig 3: Search results for titles with "Harry" and "Potter" and refined to only Books.
If restricting the search to only one category doesn't apply for what you are trying to find, you may also limit the search by Author (actually Author or Manufacturer). One caution though, in light of the "Less is More" principle stated above, you should choose an author with a shorter name.
For example, choosing "Rowling J.K." will limit your search result to only those items for which the full authors name was entered. If, instead, you clicked on "Rowling", you would get both items with "Rowling" for the author and items with "Rowling J.K." for the author.
Fig 4: Search results for titles with "Harry" and "Potter" and refined to "Rowling J.K." as author.
Fig 5: Search results for titles with "Harry" and "Potter" and refined to "Rowling" as author.
Now our results are getting closer to the target, but let's say you also wanted to find items that fit your budget. You may have noticed in working with the Category and Author columns that the Price column also has links. If you click on any price within the Price column, your results will be limited to only those items whose price is up to and including that price.
For example, if you clicked on a price of "19.95", items above that price would be eliminated from the list.
Fig 6: Search results for titles with "Harry" and "Potter" and refined to items up to $19.95.
Advanced "Advanced Search" tips
For those of you familiar with the more popular search engines like Google and Yahoo, you may know that their systems allow you to specify whether a term is required to be in the result or not. This is often done by putting a plus (+) or minus (-) sign directly preceeding a word. The Thematic Attic advance search system considers all terms as required unless otherwise specified, but it does allow you to specify those terms that you wish to exclude.
For example, if you wanted to find all items with the word "Harry", but don't want the "Harry Potter" series, you could enter "Harry -Potter" in the search form and the search engine will find items according to that request.
Fig 7: Search results for titles with "Harry" but with "Potter" excluded.
With this added feature you could narrow an initially broad search by eliminating undesired words. You could then furher narrow your search by category or price.
One other special note: You may have noticed the "CALL" in the price column. While we work on adding and refining details of our inventory system some items may have "CALL" in the price column. If you see this, just give us a call and we'll check on it.