Search Box

I have a bad feeling that the search boxes on .tels can not pick out individual records on a page but only pages themselves. If this is so it renders the search box completely useless for a directory with a large number of records. Anyone got some ideas on this.

could you give an example?
i thought it is working fine

subdomains are found with the search box. but if you have say 80 records on one page like name and phone number the search box will not find them. it's totally blind unless the search phrase is the name of a subdomain.

it's working without any problems
could you give an example of a search that doesn't work?

Go to www.taupo.tel. Click on Businesses by Name or Businesses by Category. Pick a name from among the many listed under the alphabetical system or under a category. Then do a search for it. Unless there is already a page somewhere on the site in the same name it returns in red that there are no results.

The search finds only words in the head or in the keyword section, but not words inside the tag line of contacts.
If you want to use the search for your .tel, you have to place the business names on top or at the bottom.
Do a search for "population" and the search will bring you directly to www.about-taupo.taupo.tel.

So with 90+ contact records per page the search box is useless for all these contacts?

I can tell from Google Analytics that people are searching for things and not finding them with the search box. Most will conclude that what they are searching for is not on the site. They will generally leave and perhaps never come back.

Consequently, I can only think of disabling the search box as a solution. Have sent email to [name can not be mentioned for legal reasons]. Will wait for their [name can not be mentioned for legal reasons] reply and make a decision. This is a major stumbling block for .tel directories - all competitors such as Yellow have this function.

have you been sued or what is the problem?

I have just had it confirmed by [name can not be mentioned for legal reasons] that none of the contact records in a directory page can be searched. The search box is therefore useless for a large directory.

The search box needs to search for all words in the directory.

ATTENTION: Mark Kolb

Can you write a fix for this and can it be inserted into a directory? {A fix being a word search}.

Mad Max wrote:have you been sued or what is the problem?

Not been sued but I don't want to take any chances of offending [name can not be mentioned for legal reasons].

I just want to explain why this Search Box problem is such a big issue. Take this page for example http://d.businesses-by-name.taupo.tel/. All the contact records (unsearchable) are in the names of businesses.

I will offer the option of an upgrade to a paid listing which will have its own subdomain (and be searchable by the Search Box).

As it stands I have had to disable the search box because all the searches relating to the individual contact records on a page are unsearchable. So a user is just going to assume the directory is incomplete because all businesses are not included.

The user will then just cease using the site.

This is a major issue and should have been corrected years ago. Search results should be word-based and include all contact record names.

There is no other way to construct a large directory with thousands of names.

But that directory's search is blind to all the contact records. It's ridiculous frankly!

TelBlogger wrote:

Mad Max wrote:have you been sued or what is the problem?

Not been sued but I don't want to take any chances of offending [name can not be mentioned for legal reasons].

i understand!
you are playing the huffy kid here

TelBlogger wrote:I just want to explain why this Search Box problem is such a big issue. Take this page for example http://d.businesses-by-name.taupo.tel/. All the contact records (unsearchable) are in the names of businesses.

I will offer the option of an upgrade to a paid listing which will have its own subdomain (and be searchable by the Search Box).
.....
There is no other way to construct a large directory with thousands of names.

You have a few choices.

3000 subdomains (folders/pages) is what is delivered with the default proxy per base .tel purchase. (A few years ago it was just 1000 but the community was successful in having that upgraded) . No other registrars (that i am aware of) have offered up a .tel proxy alternative with more subdomains than the default

You could register sub-directories domains to expand your subdomains total. ...And with the most recent imageAd "click" allowing for jumping/navigating more fluidly/intuitively between sub-directories of the parent-directory, (and back to the parent directory) now, with your creative you can do things like colour the yellow pages yellow, white pages white.

each sub-directory you could have 300,000 contact/naptr records.
(not searchable each contact, but perhaps use the comma separated information record and dump the total page data into that keyword field. try to be unique as much as possible so that a business will not come up due to being keyworded on multiple pages)

Good luck with your directory efforts.

Boracay wrote:

TelBlogger wrote:I just want to explain why this Search Box problem is such a big issue. Take this page for example http://d.businesses-by-name.taupo.tel/. All the contact records (unsearchable) are in the names of businesses.

I will offer the option of an upgrade to a paid listing which will have its own subdomain (and be searchable by the Search Box).
.....
There is no other way to construct a large directory with thousands of names.

You have a few choices.

3000 subdomains (folders/pages) is what is delivered with the default proxy per base .tel purchase. (A few years ago it was just 1000 but the community was successful in having that upgraded) . No other registrars (that i am aware of) have offered up a .tel proxy alternative with more subdomains than the default

You could register sub-directories domains to expand your subdomains total. ...And with the most recent imageAd "click" allowing for jumping/navigating more fluidly/intuitively between sub-directories of the parent-directory, (and back to the parent directory) now, with your creative you can do things like colour the yellow pages yellow, white pages white.

each sub-directory you could have 300,000 contact/naptr records.
(not searchable each contact, but perhaps use the comma separated information record and dump the total page data into that keyword field. try to be unique as much as possible so that a business will not come up due to being keyworded on multiple pages)

Good luck with your directory efforts.

Hi thanks for the options you listed and the good wishes. The first two I had considered. The third one I need to think about.

3,000 subdomains is enough because not all your contact record businesses/people will want to pay for an enhanced listing.

One reason is that I will offer free, regular and premium options for listing. Contact records naturally fit into the free category. You have to offer something better for the paid options and sub-domains fit the bill.

But the real solution is building a better search box. I wonder if this can be done by a software developer? At any rate I have removed the useless search box from my directory.

The problem is that Telnic is promoting only onepager (without search box) now with Telnames.
Directories are currently not supported.

Latest update from Telnic on this issue:

they have no plans to fix this problem and the code is not available to us which would enable us to hire someone to fix it.

Trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear I guess you could tell your directory customers that they can only be found by the search box if they upgrade their listing to a full page. Seems amateurish though.

Hi could this meta popup search engine help?

Ixquick is the world's most powerful search engine employing the most advanced metasearch technology.

Ixquick search results are more comprehensive and more accurate than other search engines. Ixquick's unique capabilities include an Advanced Search, a global search and power refinement.


Find phone numbers and addresses worldwide with Ixquick's International Phone Directory, or search through 18 million hours of video fun with Ixquick's Video search.

https://www.ixquick.com/uk/link-instructions.html

https://www.ixquick.com/uk/power-search-techniques.html

While we can't add frames to a .tel to load content you could put a click to search picture?, then on your own site just a single page with the embeded iframe and try to make it search only your .tel

https://www.ixquick.com/uk/link-instructions.html

Or the other option is do the same but one of you makes a better none google search engine that targets only results in indeviduals .tel sites.

Maybe telcp? like pick a .tel and click turn on search, so it inserts a link and image in the advert section maybe and have a recurvive tick box. And have this custom engine look like a tel page aka if you use X Y Z color on your tel it mirrors it.

Linking to telsearch.telcp.com/teldomain.tel/ etc no idea what that ix engine looks like I'm not on a pc able to test etc. wince 5.0

Or you could put an icon like rss in circle but for "auto geo search" aka they click it and are shown a page of all the tel sub domains in that tel that are "close to their location" as I would assume its a directory that can be used while they're in the actual place unless booking via phone.

So letting them click that might speed up its usage to find things without typing etc I guess they could switch between just listing all phone numbers near geo, all etc to quickly find a specific type of record.