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> The one thing you bring up that's interesting is what to do with bad searches. How do you deal with a mis-typed part number? Should a system know which part n

by ktsmith 16y ago

> The one thing you bring up that's interesting is what to do with bad searches. How do you deal with a mis-typed part number? Should a system know which part number you have? If so, how would that be done? There's lots of ways to handle this but doing a fuzzy search for similar or possibly related part numbers should be easy enough. The user can then be presented with those search results. If the model/part number isn't found you could even provide them the option of adding content for that part if the site takes user generated content. I don't think I've seen any site take this approach but instead go with the spammy show a ton of ads approach instead. Appliance models and part numbers is actually pretty interesting. A couple of people I know built and maintain a simple desktop application for smaller appliance retailers and parts/service companies. The application contains a database of all valid part numbers issued by every major appliance vendor for the last twenty years or so. This information is updated about once per week by the manufacturers and they supply this information freely to anyone that wants it or to members of specific programs. Some of this information is provided via faxes or emails which sucks but data entry can be farmed out to temps. This company aggregates the data and provides it as a service to their customers. The application can do full or partial matches for part numbers and can filter based on appliance type. If a small two man team that doesn't even work on the project full time can successfully manage that I don't see why the big web based sites are so full of bogus content and spam.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
There's lots of ways to handle this but doing a fuzzy search for similar or possibly related part numbers should be easy enough. The user can then be presented with those search results. If the model/part number isn't found you could even provide them the option of adding content for that part if the site takes user generated content. I don't think I've seen any site take this approach but instead go with the spammy show a ton of ads approach instead. Fuzzy logic searches would be awesome. The problem here, of course, is that the site doesn't own the search program. They can only influence it in certain predefined ways. So if you're building a site for dishwashers from the 1970s and you know that folks consistently misspell some brand name? You either provide a page for that misspelling that Google can crawl or those folks don't get content. Assuming you're doing a quality site, folks who can't spell need content as much as those who can. Yet if you provide a page based on a misspelling folks will yell "spammer!". It puts you in a bind. There's no answer everybody is going to be happy with. I think people can tell whether or not site owners are trying to help them out or just trying to trick them using Google. At least I hope so. I know as much as I hate ads, I'm happy if I never saw one again for the rest of my life. I have to be careful not to take that personal opinion and apply it to all site creators, however. There's nothing wrong with noticing that folks are looking for something, can't find it, and providing content in that area. In a lot of ways Google is a victim of their own success. The net was so new, the algorithm so cool, that it looked a lot like magic. People got used to the magic and forgot that it's just a computer program somewhere. I think we may expect too much.

by ktsmith 16y ago

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

There's lots of ways to handle this but doing a fuzzy search for similar or possibly related part numbers should be easy enough. The user can then be presented with those search results. If the model/part number isn't found you could even provide them the option of adding content for that part if the site takes user generated content. I don't think I've seen any site take this approach but instead go with the spammy show a ton of ads approach instead. Fuzzy logic searches would be awesome. The problem here, of course, is that the site doesn't own the search program. They can only influence it in certain predefined ways. So if you're building a site for dishwashers from the 1970s and you know that folks consistently misspell some brand name? You either provide a page for that misspelling that Google can crawl or those folks don't get content. Assuming you're doing a quality site, folks who can't spell need content as much as those who can. Yet if you provide a page based on a misspelling folks will yell "spammer!". It puts you in a bind. There's no answer everybody is going to be happy with. I think people can tell whether or not site owners are trying to help them out or just trying to trick them using Google. At least I hope so. I know as much as I hate ads, I'm happy if I never saw one again for the rest of my life. I have to be careful not to take that personal opinion and apply it to all site creators, however. There's nothing wrong with noticing that folks are looking for something, can't find it, and providing content in that area. In a lot of ways Google is a victim of their own success. The net was so new, the algorithm so cool, that it looked a lot like magic. People got used to the magic and forgot that it's just a computer program somewhere. I think we may expect too much.