Products not showing up in Magento search, but are on website

Question

I'm having major issues with my search function in Magento, the products are showing up in some searches, in the main categories, but when I search for the specific product model number (which most customers will search for).

For example searching for a YAMAHA PSR-E233 61-KEY PORTABLE KEYBOARD if I type in Keyboard it comes up under that category, but if I search 'PSR' which most people would search, it says 'no products to show' - which is areal issue for our site.

Apologies I am new to web development in generally and am learning Magento, I have spent all afternoon searching for this and have not been able t fix it, I have tried all the obvious settings in Magento that I have come across, such as Please check following settings are done for your product

• The products must be Visible in Catalog.
• The products must be Enabled.
• Product must have a stock Quantity.
• The product must be set to In Stock.
• If the product is set not to track stock, it still need to have a stock Quantity and be set to In Stock.
• The product must be assigned to the target Category.
• If using multi-website mode (or if you imported the products through Data Flow), the products must be assigned to the target Website.
• You must refresh your “var/Cache” & rebuild all indexes from admin > system > index management

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Answer 1

You need to set the visibility attribute on the product to catalog, search. That will make sure the product can be found.

You also need to set which attributes are searchable. Go into the attributes admin page under catalog. Then find the attribute you want (SKU I'm guessing). Inside that change the Use in Quick Search and Use in Advanced Search options to Yes