anyone done a search on price range setup?

[johnbiggscr]

We have set up a custom search function for a couple of our sites that allows a visitor to search for a size and brand of a product. This works pefectly and does exactly what we wanted to do at the time.
However a lot of customers are wanting to also specify a price range within the search to narrow down the results.
If our products rarely changed prices then it would be simple enough to add a price range value to the search keywords depending on the price of the product but our problem lies in almost 1000 products that can change their prices on a daily basis due to supply. To go through and check each product each day to see if the search keyword 'range' value had to change would be too time consuming, and we would have to do this on multiple sites.
Has anyone here setup a search on a similar system and can provide advice on how they did it?

We use ShopSite® Pro 11 sp1 r2.

[Jim]

How big are your price ranges? I would select a fairly wide range for prices, depending on what is being sold, and expand the range the higher the prices. I would then use a keyword to define the range and not the actual product price. Say you sell items from 1 to 200 dollars, break the products into groups of: Less than 10,10 to 25, 25 to 50, 50 to 100, 100 to 150, more than 150. You could use keywords like ten, twentyfive, fifty, hundred, onefiveoh, twobigones etc. The words need to be unique if you have your search set to allow stems (partial word matches). You could use multiple keywords if you want the search for multiple groups like 50 and under could have the keyword for each of the 10, 25 and 50 products.

To manage the constant keyword changes when the price changes, I would use a spread sheet and use a formula in the column for the keywords. The formula would set the keyword to the appropriate text keyword(s) based on the price column of the product in the spreadsheet.

The when you upload the price changes to your store just upload the keyword field also and publish to get the search index updated with the latest values.

[johnbiggscr]

Jim, thanks for the prompt response to this.
I actually had a logic breakthrough after I posted and I came up with a similar solution to what you suggested. We use an automated download and update of product data on a daily basis and my suggestion was to set a product field with a specific search value based on price, so that $23.55 would result in the value of <50 and $67.00 would result in <100 etc.
Instead of using the spreadsheet idea to update it, we wil use the upload program to work out the value and add it to the right field.

I think my logic is sound but I guess we will have to try it. Its good to see your idea is more or less the same as I came up with, that gives me more confidence. Thanks.