Search taking much too long

[rmruda]

Our database is large with approximately 20,000 pages/products. I would say 85% of the time a simple search takes forever (over a minute) and clearly we are loosing customers because of this. We are on a shared server but our ISP says the server is not over utilized. Even if the index file is large (which it must be) a minute to search it and produce a result is unacceptable. Our ISP suggests we first drop a message on the support forum first.
Thanks

Richard

[ShopSite David]

I would try having search index less text by going to Preferences -> Search Settings -> Search Indexing and then uncheck the indexing of everything but Name, then Publish and see if this improves things. If the results still take too long I would guess that it is a factor of the load on the shared server. Also that fact that it sounds like the same search sometimes is much faster indicates that the server may be very busy the other times.

[rmruda]

ok thanks, makes sense.
R