No results when using a question mark

  • I’m setting up a customer support page with a search form. I’m pretty positive that people will use the form to search for questions, including a question mark at the end. But every time I test a search, and use a question mark, there will be no results.

    Example:
    Search for: ‘Wat kost het’ (how much is it) and you’ll get the correct result.
    Search for ‘Wat kost het?’ and there are no results.

    You can do this with every question, adding a question mark at the end will result in no results 90% of the time. So, how can I get around this? Is there a way to exclude the question mark from the results, or disable special characters all together?

    Or maybe I an missing something, because this should be happening to others, correct?

    Thanks!

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Support Nayeem-Ul-Islam Nipun

    (@nayeem-ul-islam-nipun)

    Hi @reinoutsch,
    Greetings. Thanks for reaching out. Hope you are doing well.

    Regarding your query, really sorry for the inconvenience. I have checked this on my end and have found the same as you mentioned. I have informed our Dev Team about this and I will notify you ASAP with an update once I hear back from the dev team. Don’t worry.

    Please feel free to reach out anytime you have issues or queries We are always here to assist you.

    Thanks and Regards.

    Plugin Support Nayeem-Ul-Islam Nipun

    (@nayeem-ul-islam-nipun)

    Hi @reinoutsch,
    Greetings. Hope you are doing well.

    Thanks for allowing me time. I really appreciate your patience. Our Dev Team has checked the issue deeply and found everything is working fine on your website and also for other search results. For reference please check this screencast – https://d.pr/v/zSwJmT

    With BetterDocs search, if you enter 2/3 or more words to search the docs should be there with same name. If you added the ? (special character) with search the last word should have ? on the title as well. Same thing for other special characters as well.

    For example, if you search with BetterDocs? keywords you will get the results. But if you tried to search with Docs? it will not show any results if none of the title have any word like Docs?

    Hope things are clear now. Please feel free to reach out anytime you have issues or queries. We are always here to assist you.

    Thanks and Regards.

    Thread Starter ReinoutSch

    (@reinoutsch)

    Thank you so much for getting back, and providing a clear explanation. It totally makes sense, and I understand how the form reacts. But the outcome remains the same, using a question mark will still negatively impact the results.

    Let’s say there is an article: ‘How to get started with BetterDocs’.
    And I search ‘How do I get started with BetterDocs’, it will display that article as a result.
    But when I search ‘How do I get started with BetterDocs?’ there is no result.

    Same goes for:
    ‘How do I get started’ > Will get the correct result
    ‘How do I get started?’ > No results

    Video example here

    Conclusion: the question mark is blocking good results. I don’t think it strange to believe that people will add question marks in their searches. The question mark is not doing anything positive to filter the results, it’s only blocking perfectly good results. The only way around this is to add a massive list of words to the article with a question mark, but that would be nonsense.

    The easiest solution is to not take the question mark out of the equation. As for now, I don’t think we can use BetterDocs Pro if this remains an issue. Because the search form is used as an ‘Ask your question’ feature. That would be a shame, it’s an impressive plugin overall.

    Thanks ?

    Plugin Support Nayeem-Ul-Islam Nipun

    (@nayeem-ul-islam-nipun)

    Hi @reinoutsch,
    Greetings. Hope you are doing well.

    Thanks a lot for your understanding. I really appreciate this. I have checked the screen recording you have shared and found that the search keywords you have used dosen’t have ? sign after the Docs title and this is why when you add the ? sign on search it shows No result.

    Also, I can totally understand that user can add ? sign while they search for docs and may get no results. But our BetterDocs search is a live search where it will show the results instantly under the search bar. So when they will enter most of the search keywords they will find the required docs in the search results before they enter the ? sign.

    Hope things are clear now. Please feel free to reach out anytime you have issues or queries. We are always here to assist you.

    Thanks and Regards.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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