When I perform a Company Search on part of the name the results appear to mimic the results of a CHD search when using the ‘Enhanced’ Index, although they don’t appear (to me) to be in any particular order (see extract)
Company Name: GREEN LIMITED
Company Name: GREEN & GREEN LIMITED
Company Name: GREEN 2 GREEN LIMITED
Company Name: GREENGREEN GRASS LIMITED
Company Name: GREENGREEN TAXIS LTD
Company Name: GREEN ON GREEN LIMITED
Company Name: GREEN OR GREEN LIMITED
Company Name: BICESTER GREEN
Company Name: CAPITANCHICK GREEN
Company Name: GREEN ALEXANDER
Company Name: GREEN BEAR
Is there a way to force the use of the CHD search ‘Alpha’ Index and to ensure results are ordered?
Have you tried searching through the new Companies House Beta website https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk ? This uses the API to perform the search and should give you a good visual demonstration of how search works.
In essence, search returns results that most closely match your search terms. The more words you supply, the more relevant the search results become. This is the same as searching on Google for instance. The results are weighted and favour an exact match as the highest weight. The goal of the search is to find the company (or officer, when we introduce that) you are looking for, quickly and easily.
There are some problem scenarios where an alphabetically sorted list is a solution, but may be only one of many possible solutions. We are looking at this in detail, and it would be a great help to us if you could describe your scenario and why alphabetically sorted list helps?