How to bring the best search results to my users?

Question

I am creating a website similar to yel where people add information about their businesses to show they are available for clients who need them. The business table has the following fields (business name, categories, products, description, phone, pictures, etc.).

The problem I am facing is how to bring the best results according to the user's "search query"? Against which field should I base? I am so interested about this problem since I have seen many websites have the following problem with the following scenario:

• A client searches for a business with a given category, however the categories used by the website have different name for the same category he wants, so no results even if the business he wants exist in the database.

Example: client searches for "computer programmer", however, computer programmers are tagged "developers".

Answer 1

You can use a Search Thesaurus, which basically is predefined synonymes stored in your search engine. So if the user search for programmer, your thesaurus should translate this to search for "developers" and "coders" as well.

The real problem here is to find out which terms your target audience use. The best option here is to look through your search analysis and find out what terms your users use. It's hard work, but it really is worth the trouble.