Search Term Modifier

The Search Term Modifier feature allows you to affect the input of a search query, in order to alter or supplement the search with relevant modifications.

This feature is useful to address edge-case scenarios that the engine cannot otherwise handle on its own. Compare and contrast with synonyms, which are simpler and more broad rules for improving your users' search experience, but which cannot be configured to be dependent on certain types of input.

A Search Term Modifier works by identifying certain conditions for an incoming search request, and then performing specific actions as defined in the Search Term Modifier UI. This means that the Search Term Modifier takes one or more Conditions, and then performs one or more Actions in response.

Alterations made to a search will not be visible to end users, nor will they reflect in the input section of the Overview page.

Search Term Modifier: Conditions

At least one condition is required for a Search Term Modifier to take effect. You may use any number of and and or conditions to further narrow or broaden the scope of the term modifier.

The following conditions can be configured:

• Equal
• Contain
• Starts With
• Ends With

All conditions can be negated as well, to have the opposite effect, e.g. "when search term does not contain [term]".

The term modifier conditions can also be further specified to require a minimum length. This is useful particularly for Starts With and Ends With conditions, where broad terms may be specified that require some further refinement.

And/Or Conditions

The inclusion of and and or conditions allows you to specify your term modifier conditions more precisely. This may help avert having to create multiple rules, by adding multiple or conditions for separate terms that should all be treated equally, or to specify that more than one condition must be met for the search term modifier to kick in.

Search Term Modifier: Actions

There are four different actions that may be performed to a search:

• Append to Term
• Replace Words in Term
• Remove From Term
• Replace Term

Multiple actions can be chained together in the same rule, allowing you to perform more complex actions should you need it. Note that these actions happen in order, meaning that the first action will be taken, then the second, then the third, etc.

Append to Term

This will add a word to the term, and include it in the search.

Usecase Example

If you have pages detailing certain certificates, and you want to ensure that users find them when searching for certification, you might append certificate to the search to ensure you find as many relevant results as possible.

Replace Words in Term

This will replace the words specified in the "Words" field with the words in the "with" field.

Usecase Example

If you are selling footwear, but do not carry Nike brand products, you may want to set up a search term modifier for any term that includes nike with a more generic search for sneakers.

Remove From Term

This will remove the specified term from the search without replacing it with anything. This may help clean up multi-word searches where one or more words muddies the results.

Replace Term

This will replace the entire input term with the specified value. Unlike Replace Words in Term, this will clear the entire search and replace it with something else - useful if users are prone to searching for multi-word terms that yield no results, but may still be related to relevant entities in the dataset.