On site searching is key to usability...

We have launched advanced keyword searching on our travelzen system which enables product to be searched by words contained within all of the text.

• The text is weighted according to it's relevance, for example, a country is highly relevant whereas the detail on a day's itinerary is less so.
• Misspellings are suggested based on text that is actually on the website, so it is much more difficult to draw a blank...
• Results are sorted by relevance, which makes sure that the best results are always delivered first.

An example of this in action can be seen on the Explore Worldwide website.

The first results will be the ones that match all words in the search, followed by ones that match just one or two. SOLR then allows us to filter that search by a number of facets which allows the user to be able to refine a search over many hundred holidays down to just a handful of products that are suitable.

Faceted searching is becoming the standard on websites with many products and makes life much easier for the client trying to find their perfect holiday!

For enquiries about Apache SOLR searching, the Travel Zen system and more, please contact Matt Illston