Expanding Search Criteria

I have ProductCart v3.01 PPD

When people do searches with either the supplied search box in the header or in the advanced search page in the keyword field, it seems that the only place it searches in is the NAME field of the product record.  If you put in keywords from the short or long description field, it will come back with no results.

This is troubling because it prevents my users from being able to search for products on those keywords.  I can't put the entire description in the NAME field so that it will come up in searches.

What file(s) affect the keyword search?  Is there a way I can add the short and long description fields to the list of fields it should search for matches?  This WOULD solve my problem since the bulk of the keywords that people would find our products in is in the long & short description fields.

Also, can I rearrange the order of the input fields & labels of the Advanced Search page so that the Keyword box is on top of everything?  That would be where people would look for an input field to search on when they first go there.  Burying it down as the 7th field makes it harder for my users to find anything.

P.S. - Please don't bother posting a reply if all you're going to say is "update to the latest version of ProductCart" - THAT is counter-productive, in my book!

MarkCoyle;

I tried putting some keywords in one of the description fields and it worked.  I don't understand why others were not working?  I guess I'll have to go through the description fields of my items and try to populate them with keywords. 

Thanks.

Will having a last line at the bottom of the long description (which usually comes up in the product page) with "Keywords: [word1], [word2], [word3], ..." affect search engine ranking?  I'd hate to fix my site so it's more friendly to it's internal search, but then lower it's rank on search engines because it would be flagged as "spam".

We don't bother to define separate keyword lists, just put them in the descriptions as per the post above - works a treat.

In the circumstance where we want to flag it to search engines, we use the product/category meta-tag fields.

cheers
Mark

Um...yes you can add other keywords that aren't in the description like the examples you mentioned above. But I can't imagine what words apply to a product but don't apply to the description.
Here's an example of what I think could work. Let's say the keyword is "endoscopy kits" but the actual product isn't a kit.
You could say, "This item can also be purchased as a kit, please see the Endoscopy Kit by searching for sku: 12345."
or you could simply create a "cross-selling" item and add the kit to it.

So just a product suggestion. But I really think it could be okay to addd the "other categories or Also" if they apply to your products. But make sure it makes sense when added to the description.

Hope that helps!