Implementing alphabetical search in Magento can be tedious if you dont know the right approach. But its as easy as anything. You just need to alter two files to make it work.
Note: Do not edit or add this code to your core files if you wish to upgrade Magento to newer versions in the future. Please create below mentioned files in the app/core/code/local directory with complete directory structure as in Magento core.

app\code\local\Mage\Catalog\Block\Product\List\Toolbar.php

public function setCollection($collection)
    {
        $this->_collection = $collection;

        $this->_collection->setCurPage($this->getCurrentPage());

        // we need to set pagination only if passed value integer and more that 0
        $limit = (int)$this->getLimit();

For those of you who love Google Custom Search and would like to use it with the Magento, here is a little how to. Entire embed process is really easy. It all comes down to copy paste-ing few lines of code from Google to Magento. My idea is to create the static block in Magento CMS section and then use the custom CMS page from which I will call this statick block among other HTML content I might wish to throw into the CMS page.

For starters, we need to create Google Custom Search engine. Attached are few screenshots to see how it looks.

Google Analytics has always shown you how people search to find your site. With Site Search, you can now see how people search your site once they are already on it. This is a goldmine of information because every time visitors search, they literally tell you in their own words what they are looking for.
How do I set up Site Search tracking for my Analytics profile?

Step 1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.

Step 2. Go to: “Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Edit Profile Information” and enter Magento site search query parameter “q” (GET parameter) in the input filed provided.

It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been working on Magento quite actively last two months. I noticed this negative trend in my blogging; more I know about Magento, the less I write about it. Some things just look so easy now, and they start to feel like something I should not write about. Anyhow…. time to share some wisdom with community

Our current client uses somewhat specific (don’t they all) store set. When I say specific, i don’t imply anything bad about it. One of the stand up features at this clients site is the advanced search functionality. One of the coolest features of the built in advanced search is the possibility to search based on attributes assigned to a product.

To do the search by attributes, your attributes must have that option turned on when created (or later, when editing an attribute). In our case we had a client that wanted something like