The challenges of indexing business names

Posted by Philippe Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:50:00 GMT

Last night I added a little something to the indexing/searching so it deals better with business names that have only 1 letter, a space, 1 letter, a space, etc.

For example in Québec, we have the CLSC’s, they’re all listed as “C L S C CityNameHere”.

We’re now indexing “more than one time [1 letter + 1 space]” as 1 word, making it CLSC instead.

This will help with all the businesses with acronyms, like “C. A. M. U.” (now indexed as CAMU) or “J G Construction” (you can search for JG, or J G).

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Facebook Integration

Posted by Philippe Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:59:00 GMT

Last night we finished some Facebook integration. It’s basically an application that will let Ourbis figure out links between people and let you search in your friends bookmarks.

The idea is basically this: if you bookmark ~5 businesses you like. And all your friends bookmark ~5 businesses too. It’ll quickly grow into a HUGE database of information!

Even if your friend doesn’t actually review the business (write text) but just bookmarks it, it’s still an indication over another that it might be worth to look at this particular one over another (unless it’s rated 1!)

Feel free to email us if you have suggestions, comments, etc. And we hope you will participate!

You can find the app here

If you’re wondering, we used the RFacebook gem and Rails plugin, but modified it a little bit so it doesn’t takeover our whole application (the filters are not controller-by-controller).

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