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Reply To: Poor search results when using THE as the first word

Home Forums Product Support Forums Ajax Search Pro for WordPress Support Poor search results when using THE as the first word Reply To: Poor search results when using THE as the first word

#17898
Ernest MarcinkoErnest Marcinko
Keymaster

Hi,

You have mutliple options in this case:

When using the regular engine
These work best, when using the regular engine (default). If you use the index table engine, then please proceed to the next section.
1. Keyword exceptions
Basically, this option is to replace whole/partial word matches with an empty string. If the user types in ‘the’, it is replaced simply with ”.
You can find this under the Advanced Options -> Keyword exceptions panel: https://i.imgur.com/7wUEBxq.png

2. Exact matches + secondary logic
If the search performance is decent, then exact matches + secondary logic will more likely return a better results pool. A configuration like so: https://i.imgur.com/612W2zo.png

3. Decreasing the content and other fields relevance
To make sure, that the title relevance is much higher than the other fields, lowering the other field values can do the trick: https://i.imgur.com/WAhd1Yq.png

When using the index table engine
These are the best practices when using the index table engine.

1. Excluding common words completely (includes word ‘the’)
On the index table advanced options panel, there is a common word filter, that will exclude the defined common words from the index: https://i.imgur.com/HwggG8k.png

2. Increasing the title relevance significantly
The index table engine includes word occurence. Because ‘the’ is a very common word, it is possible, that the title relevance will be much smaller compared to other fields, because of the occurrence count. I suggest trying this configuration: https://i.imgur.com/h3LheIY.png

I hope this helps!