About a month ago, I was looking for a quick and easy way to play around with a lucene index to prepare for an interview. I looked high and low for something I could implement quick and easy, but to no avail. I found a lucene search for MediaWiki, but the documentation was terrible. I looked at the Zend_Search_Lucene module to see if I could quickly put something together with the Zend Framework — nope, I was quickly over my head.
Fortunately though, Kenny Katzgrau was not over his head. I found his blog, Code Fury, where he alluded to a WordPress plugin he was working on that would leverage a stripped down version of Zend_Search_Lucene to greatly improve WordPress searches. As far as I was concerned, this was the best of both worlds. I could play around with lucene, and I could improve Enter Venture’s search function.
After contacting him, Kenny was kind enough to let me play around with an earlier, pre-alpha version of wpSearch. I had a bit of trouble with the initial install, but search results were better than my default WordPress search. The plugin used an Ajax layer to display search results, rather than my native search template, which I didn’t like. Not so anymore.
This version of wpSearch is great. It seamlessly integrates with my Enter Venture search template. It offers the ability to customize the search relevancy on Titles, Content, and Tags, and the results speak for themselves. Just check out the top 5 results for a few keywords with the default Wordpress search versus wpSearch:
For the majority of these results, wpSearch finds exactly what I’m looking for while the default Wordpress search seems to return the same results time after time. The two have similarly relevant “new york” searches (which is to say, neither is perfect), but wpSearch is perfect on the “book” search as it finds 5 of my 6 book posts in the top 5 results. My 6th book post came in at number 6.
The one knock on wpSearch is that the install may slip some people up. There are a few steps to complete, and it still looks like some kinks need to be worked out based on the WordPress plugins page’s comments. It’s much better than the original version and should only get easier.
Congrats to Kenny for putting together what seems like a potentially great new way to search with Wordpress. I look forward to future releases.
Everyone else, let me know what you think of wpSearch.
I guess I'm one of the early adopters currently running it on my guitar blog. Overall, I've been very impressed with its search relevance - just night and day compared to the default WordPress behavior.
I ran into a few problems but I reported them and Kenny has been very responsive. I'm really looking forward to several improvements he already has in the queue according to his latest update.
Another alternative to web analytics tool available on the net is mvispy.com I have been using the service for past few months and it has worked out well for me. I have been able to do live visitor tracking. MVISPY offers a unique combination of features like real-time visitor data, IP name lookup, conversions tracking (3 ways), email alerts, live or proactive chat, tracking web leads from search engine to conversion, insert leads into sales lead systems, determine what pages don't work & track click fraud - all while determining what people are looking for, what keywords work best.
Some of the features offered by MVISPY that are not offered by Analytics are - real time tracking on website - IP look up with company name address and Jigsaw drill down feature - Tracking conversion 3 different ways with email alerts - Live pro active chat features that will pop up after a preset number of page views or visitor length on the site and when arrives at preset page - SPY shows trails from Search engine to site thru purchase on one display (not done by Google) - Auto insert of sales leads in sales Lead system - Determine what pages don't work by real time bounce data (Gogole has) - Tracks Click Fraud.
