Search mostly working, but we're missing a few

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Tribe – It’s me again (Stephanie). My client noticed that the Search function on their Events is mostly working, but a few items that should be there are not. For instance, when I search Brooklyn here in the ECP search field:

https://www.cityparksfoundation.org/events

You’ll see a list of events, but when you go to the Brooklyn category:

https://www.cityparksfoundation.org/events/category/brooklyn/

There are events there that don’t show up when searching on Brooklyn. Here are two of them:

Lyricist Lounge featuring Scarface (June 1)
The Felice Brothers / The Barr Brothers (June 4)

I don’t think this is a theme issue, since it’s mostly working. I’ll need to wait until off-peak to switch to 2014 theme to confirm the same results. Just wondering if you have any insight as to why search isn’t working completely.

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Geoff]

Hi there, Stephanie! Welcome back and thanks for getting in touch. 🙂

Oh, that’s interesting. It appears that both of the events you mentioned are displaying for me. Here are the steps I followed:

• Visited the main events page
• Entered “Brooklyn” into the search input
• Navigated to the second page of results
• Saw the two events on the second page
• Clicked one of the events
• Clicked on the Brooklyn category in the Details area of the event
• Saw both events listed on the first page of results

Do you see something different when following those steps? Or perhaps I’m missing something in there and you can point me in the right direction to see the issue? Let’s start there and see what we find. 🙂

Cheers!
Geoff

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Geoff – Thanks so much for your reply.

I am seeing those results on Page 2, however it’s a bit misleading as there is a June header on Page 1, then a May header at the top of Page 2 and then another June header further down Page 2 with the events in question listed under the second June header.

Another issue is that single terms that are in event titles and copy are not returning any results. For instance if you search here for “Felice”:

https://www.cityparksfoundation.org/events

There are no results even though we have an event here:

https://www.cityparksfoundation.org/event/summerstage-the-felice-brothers-the-barr-brothers/

With “felice” in the title, copy and URL. Oddly enough, if I search for “felice” within the Brooklyn category here:

https://www.cityparksfoundation.org/events/category/brooklyn

I get the correct result. What can we do to get better search results from this end? I guess my question is how does The Events Calendar search algorithm determine ranking, and how can we create events to improve/manipulate search results to better serve our users?

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Geoff]

Hi there, Stephanie! Thanks for following up here. 🙂

Super strange, but I get the correct results when searching “felice” from the main events page and when I search from the category page as well.

Is there something I’m missing? Sorry, not trying to be difficult here, but it is odd that I seem to be getting the correct results where you’re not. Is it possible there is something in your browser that could limiting the results? Perhaps clearing cache?

Thanks!
Geoff

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Geoff – How very odd. It’s working for me now, too. Alrightey, we can scratch that off and chalk it up to the tech mystery void.

I am still wondering, however, how we can optimize our events to show up in a less random fashion. We’re using categories and keywords up the wazoo (very technical term) to try and get them ordered more succinctly, but the multiple month headers I mentioned in my last correspondence are pretty misleading. Any advice you can offer? We already tried the Filter Bar, but due to a conflict with our rather unwieldy theme (and many hours spent trying to debug) we weren’t able to use it.

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Geoff]

Ah, that tech mystery void–gets me every time! 🙂

Good question about the month headers. Perhaps removing them would be a valid option here? You can override the template by:

• Making a copy of the template file (located at /plugins/the-events-calendar/views/list/loop.php
• Make a new folder in your theme directory called tribe-events
• Make a new folder in that one called list
• Drop the copied file in that last folder

Now that the template is in the theme, you can modify it to suit your needs. In this case, that would be removing this line:

<?php tribe_events_list_the_date_headers(); ?>

Will that work for you? Please let me know. 🙂

Cheers!
Geoff

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Geoff –

I think that will help somewhat but what we’d really like to do is get to the meat of the matter and optimize our events for more relevant results. I realized today that anything after Page 1 loses the search term. The reason for this is that we had to use WP’s default pagination since the Tribe pagination wasn’t working due to a theme conflict. This fashion of pagination refreshes the page, rather than just refreshing the list, which eliminates the search term for any page after Page 1.

Is there a way to get the search term to stick when refreshing the page? Additionally, do you have any advice on how to optimize our events?

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Geoff]

Hey there, Stephanie!

Ah, that makes a lot more sense now. It does appear that switching from the plugin’s pagination to the default WordPress pagination is at play here.

I know it’s a pain, but would it possible for you to roll back that customization? It would likely be an easier lift to resolve the theme conflict than it would be to build an alternative form of pagination.

Cheers!
Geoff

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Geoff –

No, that’s not an option. This customization was built before I got on board with the project, and it is a doozy (that’s putting it mildly). Is there a way to get the search term to stick when the page refreshes? It seems like something that would be useful. Also, is there a way to get more relevant results on the first page? I know I’ve asked all of this before in so many words but I’m not really getting a straight answer.

Thanks!
Stephanie

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, again –

I wanted to circle back to the original issue: A search for Brooklyn comes up with events in Bronx, Queens and Manhattan before all Brooklyn events are listed. If you search Brooklyn here:

https://www.cityparksfoundation.org/events

Compare that to the Brooklyn category:

https://www.cityparksfoundation.org/events/category/brooklyn/

For example, there is an event in Brooklyn, June 4, Felice Brothers, that doesn’t show up in the top 20 in the brooklyn search, but there are events in Queens, Bronx and Manhattan listed.

How can we get all Brooklyn events listed first?

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Geoff]

Hi there, Stephanie!

You’ve done a lot of great work integrating the theme with our plugin, which is awesome to see. As you can appreciate, there is a limit to how far we can go in supporting customizations–particularly very complex, ones like build an alternative form of pagination.

If you are using the_posts_pagination() function or something similar, why not try catching its output and then massage the URL so that any search terms continue to be applied? While we can’t walk you through the process for doing this, it ought to be a readily achievable goal.

Also, is there a way to get more relevant results on the first page? I know I’ve asked all of this before in so many words but I’m not really getting a straight answer.

Sorry if it seems I’ve evaded the question here. I sincerely thought we had covered this when we were able to confirm that the results on the page did in fact match up with the proper categories when we tested those steps together.

The reason some results are popping in there is because the term “Brooklyn” is contained in the event post content. For example, this event is in Queens, but the content contains Brooklyn in it.

If you’re trying to ensure search results are contained by a particular location, I would recommend enabling the location search on your site under Events > Settings > Display (uncheck the “Hide location search” option). Enabling this option will allow visitors to search by location and ensure that Brooklyn results are in fact listed first.

Otherwise, searching by keyword utilizes WordPress’ default search functionality for posts. Here’s a thread where a customer was able to customize search results by limiting search queries to the post title, which might be a good starting point.

Thanks!
Geoff

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Geoff –

I wanted to get the pagination thing fixed before I replied, to see what our actual results are on Page 2 and beyond. Now that it’s fixed, I’m getting the same results on page 1 and on page 2 we get a few more results, but there are still many events that are categorized in Brooklyn that don’t show up in the “brooklyn” search at all.

Again if you search here:

https://www.cityparksfoundation.org/events/

for brooklyn in the Tribe search, go to page 2 and you’ll never see the June 4 event (The Felice Brothers / The Barr Brothers), which is categorized in Brooklyn.

Are categories not included in the search parameters in the out-of-the-box search? If not, how can we include them? The client has been categorizing very specifically with search in mind, so we really need this to function as they expect.

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Geoff]

Hi Stephanie!

Are categories not included in the search parameters in the out-of-the-box search?

Good question. The calendar uses WordPress’ search functionality and WordPress does not include taxonomy terms in search parameters by default.

So, for example, you create a blog post in category ‘blue’ and the post title/content do not contain that keyword, searching for ‘blue’ won’t result in that post’s inclusion in the search results.

If not, how can we include them?

For including taxonomy terms, a plugin might help here. I’ve used the Search Everything plugin on other projects in the past, but have not specifically tested it against the calendar. It might be worth considering here.

I hope this helps!

Geoff

[cityparksfoundation]

Hi, Geoff –

I tried Search Everything and another plugin called Relevanssi, which sounded very promising. Unfortunately they didn’t affect the Tribe search at all. They do seem to have an effect on the main site search, but not Tribe events search.

If you do a search in the main site search for Brooklyn, the Felice Brothers event shows up on page 12. It still doesn’t show up at all in the Tribe search. How do I get this plugin to tie in with Tribe search?

Thanks!
Stephanie

[Geoff]

Hi Stephanie!

How do I get this plugin to tie in with Tribe search?

That’s a great question, but I think the plugin author would be better suited to help out since they would be more familiar with how to tackle that integration. In essence, the search plugin should support custom post types, which is what events are registered as.

Sorry I don’t have more of a concrete answer for you here, but I’m hoping the plugin developer can help shed some light here.

Cheers!
Geoff

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