Refine user search by configuring thesaurus, stop words, search characters, stemming, and spelling dictionary features.

Give single-word names to your entries, avoid non-searchable characters and stop words, and avoid creating entries which include substrings of other entries.

To avoid performance problems related to expensive or less than useful thesaurus search query expansions, follow these recommendations:

When an application user provides individual search terms in a query, the automatic phrasing feature groups those individual terms into a search phrase and returns query results for the phrase.

Automatic phrasing is similar to placing quotation marks around search terms before submitting them in a query. For example, 'my search terms' is the phrased version of the query my search terms. However, automatic phrasing removes the need for application users to place quotation marks around search phrases to get phrased results.

The result of automatic phrasing is that a Web application can process a more restricted query and therefore return fewer and more focused search results. This feature is available only for record search.

The automatic phrasing feature works by:

Point three above suggests the two typical implementation scenarios to choose from when using automatic phrasing:

There are two tasks to implement automatic phrasing:

Depending on how a phrased query is processed it may create dead-end results, for reasons including significance of term order and the fact that the MDEX Engine does not extend user phrases to match those in the phrase dictionary.

The following table provides tips and troubleshooting guidance about using the automatic phrasing feature.

Tip

Description

Examining how a phrased query was processed

 

Single word phrases

You can include a single word in your phrases_import.xml file and treat the word as a phrase in your project. This may be useful if you do not want stemming or thesaurus expansion applied to single word query terms. You cannot include single word phrases by extracting them from dimension values using the Phrases dialog box. They have to be imported from your phrases_import.xml file.

Extending user phrases

The MDEX Engine does not extend phrases a user provides to match a phrase in the phrase dictionary. For example, if a user provides the query A "BC" D and "BCD" is in the phrase dictionary, the MDEX Engine does not extend the user's original phrasing of "BC" to "BCD."

Term order is significant in phrases

Phrases are matched only if search terms are provided in the same exact order and with the same exact terms as the phrase in the phrase dictionary. For example, if "weekend bag" is in the phrase dictionary, the MDEX Engine does not automatically phrase the search terms "weekend getaway bag" or "bag, weekend" to match "weekend bag."

Possible dead ends

If an application automatically phrases search terms, it is possible a query may not produce results when it seemingly should have. Specifically, one way in which a dead-end query can occur is when a search phrase is displayed as a DYM link with results and navigation state filtering excludes the results.

For example, suppose a car sales application is set up to process a user's original query and display any automatic phrase alternatives as DYM options. Further suppose a user navigates to Cars > Less than $15,000 and then provides the search terms luxury package. The search terms match the phrase 'luxury package' in the phrase dictionary.

The user receives query results for Cars > Less than $15,000 and results that matched some occurances of the terms luxury and package. However, if the user clicks the DYM link Did you mean "luxury package"? then no results are available because the navigation state Cars > Less than $15,000 excludes them.

Note

See the Endeca Advanced Development Guidefor details about how processing order affects queries.


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