How to handle Acronyms

[danf]

After realizing that synonyms are not as powerful as I originally thought (see this thread: http://www.wrensoft.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3213) - I had sold my team on its ability to handle our needs with acronyms using synonyms - Im wondering how I can work around this limitation until synonym phrases gets implemented (hint, hint, wink, wink :) )

Since I have access to all the pages, I can add to them as needed (obviously more work than using the synonym approach, but doable). Could I add a ZOOMWORD to handle my known acryonyms and make them appear in searches?

For example, if "Paid Time Off" is used on a page, could I add a ZOOMWORD for "PTO" to this page so that it shows up when people search for PTO?

If so, what is the snippet that gets returned on the search results page? I know it won't be where the "Paid Time Off" shows up in the text, right? What if I added an html comment <!-- PTO --> right next to the "Paid Time Off" text? Zoom searches the full html content, right? If so, would the snippet in the search results show the area where the comment is located - thus returning the "Paid Time Off" text?

Or if you have any other suggestions on how to work around the synonym limitations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Ray]

After realizing that synonyms are not as powerful as I originally thought (see this thread: http://www.wrensoft.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3213) - I had sold my team on its ability to handle our needs with acronyms using synonyms - Im wondering how I can work around this limitation until synonym phrases gets implemented (hint, hint, wink, wink :) )

Synonym phrases would be nice, but it is a technically difficult thing to achieve (especially keeping performance/search times in mind). We'll have to see if inspiration will strike and provide us with some brilliant ideas on how we could achieve this.


Since I have access to all the pages, I can add to them as needed (obviously more work than using the synonym approach, but doable). Could I add a ZOOMWORD to handle my known acryonyms and make them appear in searches?

For example, if "Paid Time Off" is used on a page, could I add a ZOOMWORD for "PTO" to this page so that it shows up when people search for PTO?

Yes, absolutely.


If so, what is the snippet that gets returned on the search results page? I know it won't be where the "Paid Time Off" shows up in the text, right?

Assuming there's no other "PTO" on the page, the context description will likely be your ZOOMWORDS list. For example, if you have:

<meta name="ZOOMWORDS" content="PTO something or other">

Then your context description when searching for "PTO" will likely look like:

1. My page
My meta description
... PTO something or other ...


What if I added an html comment <!-- PTO --> right next to the "Paid Time Off" text? Zoom searches the full html content, right? If so, would the snippet in the search results show the area where the comment is located - thus returning the "Paid Time Off" text?

No, HTML comments are not indexed. The whole point of HTML comments is to specify text which is to be disregarded and not considered part of the content. You really wouldn't want any HTML comments to be searchable, they tend to be developer's notes, or in some cases function call and/or keywords used by other programs (like Dreamweaver would insert Library related code as HTML comments).