How search works?

Post Reply
Faiz
Posts: 109
Joined: Wed Jan 10, 2001 1:29 pm

How search works?

Post by Faiz »

I searched for "generic issues" (not as a phrase) on our intranet site and it pulled up 4 documents out of which only one had the words 'generic' and 'issues'. The others had poor ranking though. When I had the option "look in same sentence" turned on, it pulled up the same 4 documents, but this time with poorer ranking.
How exactly did metamorph treat this words? I didn't turn on the default thesaurus. So, how did it pull up the documents which had none of the words? Did it also look for documents with similar meanings? Is there something wrong in my search script?

Regards,
User avatar
John
Site Admin
Posts: 2597
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2000 3:18 pm
Location: Cleveland, OH
Contact:

How search works?

Post by John »

It sounds as if you are using LIKEP, which will return records that do not exactly match your query, with the best matches first.

If you want to use more precise controls, such as within sentence, then you would use the LIKE operator, and you will also need to enable some of the features that query protection normally disables, for example allowing post processing, and within processing.

<apicp alpostproc 1>
<apicp alwithin 1>

You should look at the HTML source of your results to see any messages indicating that the query was subject to query protection. Full details of query protection are at http://www.thunderstone.com/site/vortex ... qprot.html
John Turnbull
Thunderstone Software
bart
Posts: 251
Joined: Wed Apr 26, 2000 12:42 am

How search works?

Post by bart »

Also, if you would prefer that LIKEP only return exact matches in rank order do an <apicp likepallmatch 1>
Faiz
Posts: 109
Joined: Wed Jan 10, 2001 1:29 pm

How search works?

Post by Faiz »

yes, i was using LIKEP through out. Is it okay to use LIKE operator for all options of search, that is, general, within paragraph, within sentence and within line, on metamorph inverted indexes. Or do you suggest, I use LIKEP for general search and LIKE for more precise controls like within a sentence or within a line.
User avatar
mark
Site Admin
Posts: 5513
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2000 6:56 pm

How search works?

Post by mark »

It's entirely up to your needs. They both use the same metamorph inverted index. Likep is a ranker, so it is a fuzzy search. There are numerous knobs that control how fuzzy and in what way. Like is not fuzzy.
sourceuno
Posts: 225
Joined: Mon Apr 09, 2001 3:58 pm

How search works?

Post by sourceuno »

How does LIKEP work with searches for phrases? I'm using likepallmatch set to 1. It doesn't seem to be accurate for phrases. I tried doing a search for "ford mustang" and a page showed in the results that didn't have this phrase in it, but it did have the following matches in it:

Ford, Mustang
Ford® Mustang

Does the search ignore special characters when trying to do a phrase match?
User avatar
mark
Site Admin
Posts: 5513
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2000 6:56 pm

How search works?

Post by mark »

All of the "non-words" between words are treated as if they were whitespace (ignored) by indexed searches. exactphrase will prevent it from also matching "ford is mustang" (noise in between the words).
Post Reply