PassMark Logo
Home » Forum

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Search Term with Skip Words Result Not Consistent

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Search Term with Skip Words Result Not Consistent

    We've been using Zoom V6.0 for over a year now. Our client is review it as a site wide initiative. They found unusual results for some search terms, which I'm looking into now. I haven't figured out why Zoom is not being consistent in the results.

    For the search term "Cases and Commentary on the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma" which is a title of a page in their site, no results are returned. However, after testing various combinations, part of the issue seems to be one skip word, "on", while others have no issue.

    Cases Commentary on the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma - No results
    Cases and Commentary the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma - No results
    Cases and Commentary on Treatment of Multiple Myeloma - No results
    Cases and Commentary on the Treatment Multiple Myeloma - No results
    Cases Commentary the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma - Results Found (2)
    Cases Commentary on Treatment of Multiple Myeloma - No results
    Cases Commentary on the Treatment Multiple Myeloma - No results
    Cases and Commentary Treatment of Multiple Myeloma - Results Found (1)
    Cases and Commentary the Treatment Multiple Myeloma - Results Found (1)
    Cases and Commentary on Treatment Multiple Myeloma - No results
    Cases Commentary Treatment of Multiple Myeloma - Results Found (2)
    Cases Commentary the Treatment Multiple Myeloma - Results Found (2)
    Cases Commentary on Treatment Multiple Myeloma - No results
    Cases and Commentary Treatment Multiple Myeloma - Results Found (1)

    In a different example with only one skip word:

    Clinical Conversations in Multiple Myeloma: Improving Treatment Through Personalized Education - No results
    Clinical Conversations Multiple Myeloma: Improving Treatment Through Personalized Education - Results Found (4)


    Another with no "on" or "in" but several other skip words:

    Time Is of the Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke: No results
    Time of the Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke - Results Found (1)
    Time Is the Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time Is of Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time Is of the Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time the Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time of Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke - Results Found (1)
    Time of the Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time Is Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time Is the Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time Is of Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke - Results Found (1)
    Time the Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results
    Time of Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment Acute Ischemic Stroke - Results Found (1)
    Time Is Essence: Improving Evidence-Based Treatment Acute Ischemic Stroke - No results

    Hopefully this data will help and you'll be able to tell me what I need to do to have better search results.

    Thanks,
    Void

  • #2
    Difficult to comment without knowing:

    1) Which version and build number you are using
    2) Which script platform you are using
    3) What the rest of your indexer configuration is (are you indexing 2 letter words such as "on"? what words are in the skip list? etc.)

    So I'd say, to begin with, look at the above. Make sure you're at least using the final V6 release.

    If there is any legitimate bug/problem (and not a configuration issue), then it would either be fixed in the V6 final release, or in V7. We won't be going back to the V6 code to fix any further issues. So if you still have problems, we would suggest upgrading to V7.

    If the problem persists in V7 and we can verify that it is a bug, we would definitely look into fixing it with enough information to replicate the problem.
    --Ray
    Wrensoft Web Software
    Sydney, Australia
    Zoom Search Engine

    Comment


    • #3
      1. We are using Version 6.0 Build 1029. Which looks like the final build.
      2. We are using the CGI platform
      3. The skip list is the default list and setting. Thus on, it, in, and, etc. are on the list. And the "Skip words less than:" is set to 2.

      We're working on getting V7 set up.

      Comment


      • #4
        I wanted to give an update on this thread since we are now testing V7 Build 1023.

        One of the configuration items to note is that we do have "Substring match for all searches" enabled.

        If we disable this feature, which is the default for Zoom, then all skip words are ignored. But since our client wanted data returned when users typed partial words, such as "mult" for "multiple", we needed to enabled the substring matching feature. At that point skip words are no longer ignored when doing searches. It is at this point that the problem appears.

        When the substring match is enabled and skip words are used, they need to be part of a string for the search to find matches. If you content index has only "and" and you search string contains "and" then nothing will be returned. But if the same content happens to have, maybe. the word "understand" and you search on "and", you will get results, because "and" is a substring in "understand".

        However, I believe the issue I outlined above was a bug in V6 like Ray eluded to. Because even though there were words that contained the substring of skip word(s), it did not always bring back results.

        In V7, this is functioning as expected. But now this can causes confusion. If some one has a specific statement to search for, with one of the words being a skip word, and there is no text on the page containing a substring of that skip word, you'll get no results. Such as "research and development" in V7 will return no results when no words contain "and" as a substring.

        Now that we understand how the search works when substring match feature is enabled and that the bug has been fixed in V7, we can go back to our client with possible changes to configuration or adding work arounds.

        Comment

        Working...
        X