Item12998: Different outcomes with different spelling

Hey Guys,

we use the SolrPlugin for our search. We have 6 topics which begin with "EffortEstimation".

When I enter "effortestimation" into the search I get 4 results. When I enter "EffortEstimation" into the search I get 48 results.

The SolrPlugin Version is: 1.10.17, 1.10 - Enterprise.

-- FelixFreiland - 25 Aug 2014

When entering a EffortEstimation the search engine will split it up into effort estimation thus finding more results. That's done by purpose.

Compare:

• effort estimation
• EffortEstimation
• "effort estimation"
• "Effort Estimation"
• "EffortEstimation"
• effortestimation

The last ones will probably give you similar numbers ... as well as the fewest results, which is bad actually. The important points here are that results will always be sorted by relevance so that the best matches are listed first. The actual number of results is not as important really because the danger of search interfaces is more that users end up in a blind alley ("nothing found"). Better offer them near hits with partial matches in addition but ranked lower. That way users will be able to scroll down and pick the one that they actually want no matter what they entered as a query.

I hope that this clears up the way solr search works. Btw it tries to follow the same logic as google in that respect.

As this is more a support question clarifying well documented behavior, I am going to flag this bug report as "no action required". Please feel free if you still think there is an error. Thanks.

-- MichaelDaum - 25 Aug 2014

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