I have 300 stores in our physical shopping mall each with their own k2 item. They all have K2 tags for the different products they sell. I want to make a search box that searches for the search term in just the K2 Item Title and K2 tag list. Not search the text of the K2 items.

Each store has its own page at /stores/Store-name.
If you click on a tag, then all the stores of that category show up in a list. For example the K2 tag "Shoes", shows a list currently at /stores/products/Shoes

Here's what I tried that doesn't work:
1. Joomla Smart Search - Returns list of K2 items, first group where the keyword shows in "Title". Second group where keyword shoes up in K2 Item text. K2 support forum says K2 Smart Search does not search tags, so no go.

2. Filter for K2 - I used to use this for filtering by tags, but I lose the URL structure. For example, every time you change the tag in the keyword box, the URL doesn't change, so the URL for "Shoes" or "Fragrances" is the same.

3. K2 Tools Search (with Google) - This gives me a lot of results in google results format, pages, upon pages. Way more than I need. Would be good for a general site search box.

4. K2 Tools Search (not using Google) - Returns an actual list of items formatted like a category_item list. Useful, but is searching into item text and not tags.

Any other suggestions?

A. Can I configure the Google search used by "K2 Tools Search" somewhere? How would I configure it to only return matches in "K2 Title" and "K2 Tags" ?

B. I think I'd like to use the Smart Search function. Has anyone enhanced the "Smart Search - k2" plugin to index by K2 tags? If not, where is this plugin code installed on a joomla site?

C. Since I'm only searching on Titles and Tags, should I just buildup my own Search using JQuery autocomplete and populate the limited search list with a quick call to the database? links I'm taking the customer to are either /stores/Storename or product categories, /stores/products/shoes. Maybe this is the easiest solution that I can implement and I can control completely in code.

Hello,

The search plugin has the option to search on item's tags.
In the plugin simply enable the "Enable searching in tags" setting.

Now as for Google's search, results from your entire site will appear.
Finally your last solution seems to be the most user friendly.

I see this option of "Enable searching in tags" in the Joomla Search plugin, not the Joomla "Smart Search" plugin. Based on Joomla documentation, "Smart Search" replaces "Search" and "Search" should not be used.

That being said, when I started this exercise, I started with "Search" and clicking this box in the "Search - K2" plugin gave me a blank screen, so I dismissed "Search" and did not include it in the original post.

Where in the code tree is the plugin for "Search - K2" ? Maybe I could copy that tag search code and move it into the "Smart Search - K2" plugin.

Thanks for the prompt reply. Anyone else agree I should just do the "last solution" ?

Personally John, I am not such a fan of Smart search due to this fact: docs.joomla.org/Smart_Search_on_large_sites

I think you are describing a large site here so I would choose the custom autocomplete solution you where describing.

Finally have you contacted the Filter for K2 developers to see if the query can be added to the URL?