unexpected results with a search with *

[Anonymous]

Hello,

if I search for "term1* term2*" I would expect that the best result is a page that contains both terms: term1 and term2. But as the best result I get a page with 3 times term2* like "term21 term22 term23" and not "term1 term2".

Is there a way to avoid this ?

Thanks, Hans

[wrensoft]

There is no way to avoid this.

In your mind, the word 'term1' might be more important than the words 'term22' and 'term23' but Zoom doesn't know this. All words that are matched with a wild card character are treated as a seperate search term and given equal weight.

So in your example, you search would be the same as searching for,
term21 term22 term23 term1 term2
if you wanted to enter it without wild cards.

If you just wanted to see pages with term1 & term2, then there is no need to use the wild cards in the search. Just search for,
term1 term2

-----
David

[Anonymous]

Hello,

maybe I didn't explain what I want to do. Here is a more realistic example: if a webpage contains "trees and saws" and someone searches for "tree* saw*" then it is possible that the best result is "saw1 saw2 saw3" instead of "trees ans saws". Maybe there's a way to raise the score, if the webpage contains both terms ?

Hans

[Ray]

You can restrict your search to require that both wildcard keywords are matched by clicking on "match all search words" on the search form. This performs a boolean AND operation so that only results which contain a word matching "tree*" AND "saw*" would be displayed.

Otherwise, it sounds like you are currently using the "match any search words" option which returns results matching "tree*" OR "saw*". This is why a page containing "saw1 saw2 saw3" would be considered more relevant than "trees and saws".