Recommended links

[aschecht]

Just starting to add some Recommended links - yet another great feature in Zoom Search - and have some questions/observations.

Documentation for import format for Recommended links
I am importing the Recommended links into the configuration but couldn't find anywhere in the documentation the required format for imported data. I was able to figure this out by manually adding a Recommended link, exporting the file and looking at the structure of the export. I never would have guessed that vertical bars were the required field separator. Maybe I missed it in the docs but if not it would be good if this could be added to the documentation for other users.

Recommended links seem to ignore synonym list
I'm finding that Recommended links don't pay attention to the synonyms list. For example, I've set a synonym for gallstone=gallstones and a Recommended link for gallstone. The Recommended link shows for gallstone but not for its synonym gallstones. If there's a way to do this other than adding a separate Recommended link for each synonym term, please let me know. If not, this feature would make a nice addition to a future version.

Multiple keywords and/or keyword phrases for each Recommended link
I would find it useful if I could list multiple keywords and/or key phrases as triggers for a single Recommended link. Is this possible? If not, is it feasible to consider this for a future version?

Thanks,

Andrew

[David]

Here is a quote from the help file.

If you have a large list of recommended links to add or maintain, you can import them from a text file created by any text editor. The file needs to be pipe separated (the pipe is the vertical '|' character), with a recommended link entry per line. For example:
Keyword1|http://www.url1.com/|Page title|This is the page description
Keyword2|http://www.url2.com/|Another Page title|This is the page description for the 2nd page

You can also export an existing list of recommended links to a text file of this same format. This way you can maintain them outside of Zoom if need be, and/or import them back in to other ZCFG files.

To have multiple words (or phrases) match a single URL, then you need to create an entry per word or phrase. e.g. a copy and paste if you are importing a file.

I would need to check on the interaction between recomended links and synonyms.

[aschecht]

Thanks. Now I see that the Zoom Search Engine Indexer's built-in help file details importing Recommended Links. The info seems to be missing in the User Guide.pdf (it would be a good addition for the next update).

If synonyms could trigger Recommend Links too, it would save me (and maybe others) a lot of repetitive entries in the Recommended Links configuration. A wish list item?

Thanks again as always for the prompt and thorough support.

Andrew

[Ray]

You're right, the Users Guide is due for an update. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Recommended links seem to ignore synonym list
I'm finding that Recommended links don't pay attention to the synonyms list. For example, I've set a synonym for gallstone=gallstones and a Recommended link for gallstone. The Recommended link shows for gallstone but not for its synonym gallstones. If there's a way to do this other than adding a separate Recommended link for each synonym term, please let me know. If not, this feature would make a nice addition to a future version.

We'll keep this in mind but it's not quite trivial to add. Recommended links support phrases, and synonyms do not, so there are some fundamental differences in the way they work.

Multiple keywords and/or keyword phrases for each Recommended link
I would find it useful if I could list multiple keywords and/or key phrases as triggers for a single Recommended link. Is this possible? If not, is it feasible to consider this for a future version?

This is currently not supported. But I think we can consider this for the next major release. I'll add it to our list.

[aschecht]

Excellent. Thanks.

Andrew

[nibb]

Hi, I would also like to add that multiples keywords for recommended links is highly urgent. I thought i could add multiple keywords with comma separated works but it doesnt accept it.

Making an entry for each keyword is veyr anoying specially because there is not duplicate tab. Still I wanted to add some links that can have even 10 words so making 10 entries for each recommended link doesnt make to much sense.

Im going to use the recommeded link function to match better the results so Im going to have dozens or even hundreds recommended links for the top searches.

[Ray]

It's on our list of things to add for a V6.1 release later this year (V6.1 will be a free minor upgrade for V6.0 users).

[sxuwebmaster]

Workaround for Multiple Keywords

To make it easier to create entries for multiple keywords all pointing to the same target page, we do our editing in Excel. Of course, before doing so, you have to manipulate the exported text file from Zoom to replace the pipes with tabs before opening in Excel, do your edits in Excel, then manipulate the text file again to remove the double quotes Excel inserts around text and replace the tabs with pipes... but it seems to be worth it when adding multiple entries, because you can easily duplicate a row in Excel and it makes life easier to be able to sort your list as well.

[aschecht]

Thanks sxuwebmaster! Nice tip. I'll give it a try.

Andrew

[Kimber63]

To make it easier to create entries for multiple keywords all pointing to the same target page, we do our editing in Excel. Of course, before doing so, you have to manipulate the exported text file from Zoom to replace the pipes with tabs before opening in Excel, do your edits in Excel, then manipulate the text file again to remove the double quotes Excel inserts around text and replace the tabs with pipes... but it seems to be worth it when adding multiple entries, because you can easily duplicate a row in Excel and it makes life easier to be able to sort your list as well.

Are there more detailed direction on to do this with excel?

Thanks
Kimberly

[David]

Are there more detailed direction on to do this with excel?

Might have helped is you had included a more detailed description of what you are trying to do.

You can import and export lists of recommended links from Zoom. We would suggest using a text editor (like Notepad or UltraEdit) if you think you need to do external editing.

The format for this is in the help file.

However if you want to use Excel, then you need to use pipe separators instead of the standard commas for CSV format. One easy way to do this is to change your windows regional settings (in the Windows control panel) list separator from a comma to a pipe character.