[LINK] And then the White Pages falls prey to the redesigners...

[Eric Scheid]

On 10/8/06 12:28 PM, "rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au" <rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au>
wrote:

> I wanted the number of an Apple dealer in Chatswood called Mac Centric. So in
> the business name I put Mac Centric, and in the suburb/postcode field I put
> 2067.
> 
> The search results start at A-Mac constructions in Kenthurst, postcode 2156,
> there are 72 listings, and none of them are the number I wanted anyway. What's
> the use of a search filter that doesn't work?

Try searching for MacCentric (no space!) and you get exactly one match, the
exact one you wanted.

My guess is that it couldn't find an entry for "Mac Centric" and so
broadened the search for everything containing the word "Mac" or the word
"Centric" ... but (stupidly) only exactly the word "Mac", and not words
starting with Mac, such as MacCentric.

A search for "Big Mac Insulation" returns just the one entry for "Big Mac
Insulation", but a search for "Big Mac" returns many partial match entries
such as "Asagao Mac" and "At Home With Mac" and "Big Chook".

This isn't a web design problem (although there are plenty of those also
present), this is a search engine problem. Stemming, graceful expansion of
results, etc.

e.