AutoDirector forum

Hi, I wondered if there is a way, or if this is an idea for a future version, to search by car from a html link?

what I mean is - I would like to put a page up about a specific car model, then have a link to say "click here to see our current stock of 1.6 escorts"
so I would need the ability to have a link like - http://www.mysite.com/vehicles.html?search="1.6 escort"

Sounds like a great idea to me ... it's on the (increasingly long) list of to-dos!

Actually, this is already been implemented to some extent. All you do is add ?search=words to your showroom URL. So, if your showroom is at http://mysite.com/autodirector.html and you want to search for "Aston Martin", you'd use the URL:

http://mysite.com/autodirector.html?search=aston%20martin

(you use %20 for a space).

Hope you find that useful!

Note that the search URL argument will only work if searching is enabled for the showroom (see the site settings). It will be ignored otherwise.

This is great - I recommend anyone using Google ads to put in multiple ads with the search urls as the destination for each model. eg
"find used buicks" - autodirector?search=buick

However Craig, the car default does go a little wild - the default is highest price first, but if you use the search option, they come out as all buicks, but in random order, where as I would prefer to see
buick $9000
buick $8000
buick $7000...

The order is generally determined by the MySQL search relevancy. So, if Buick is mentioned three times in one vehicle, it should achieve a higher ranking than a vehicle where it's mentioned twice.

is it possible to have a sub term? eg select * from table SORT BY $searchphrase, price DESC

That would be possible, but the search phrase returns a floating-point value which is unlikely to be the same as any other vehicle. The price comparison would only be used in rare situations where the search phrase value matched perfectly.

The search is something we're looking into. Ultimately, I suspect we'll drop the MySQL search and implement a far more customisable version.