In terms of synonyms within Answers how sensitive is the Answers search out of the box? Does it account for common misspellings, unnecessary white spaces? Or would these variations need to be added a synonyms?
Hey Laura,
The built-in Answers algorithm should handle misspellings, typos and whitespace. It does this in three ways.
1. Spell Correction
Every Answers experience has built-in spelling correction. This will show up as “Did you mean” in the search results. You can see an example from yext.com here.
This spell correction dictionary includes any common words found on the public web and any words in the Knowledge Graph that are searchable.
2. Typo Tolerance
Most of our algorithms have some level of built-in typo tolerance. This depends on the length of the word, the number of characters off and the algorithm but this will handle small typos if the spell correction doesn’t kick in.
3. Stemming
Finally, our textSearch algorithm has built-in stemming so that words are reduced to their root word. For example, if you search for searching it will match the token search. Here is an example from yext.
If none of these handle the typo/misspelling then let us know. A synonym is a good way to fix an edge case but in general, this should work out of the box.
Let me know if you have any follow up questions,
Max
1 Like
Thanks @Mshaw for your detailed response the visual examples are a great help too. It sounds like most areas are certainly covered out of the box.
Kind regards,
Laura