Configuring fuzzy search

You can configure how search works when you perform a fuzzy search query in a custom search tool. Fuzzy search queries look for approximate spellings that match the entered search string, and find matches if you misspell a term, or are uncertain of its spelling. For example, entering “tst" matches terms like "test," "tests," and so on, depending on how the fuzzy search parameters are set.

To set the fuzzy search parameters:

1. Click Designer Studio > System > Settings > Search.
2. Expand the Query settings section.
3. Enter the following parameters:

   • Degree of fuzziness - Select the edit distance, that is, the search string length within which the approximate matching of characters occurs. If you select "Auto," the maximum edit distance is:
     • 0 for strings of one or two characters.
     • 1 for strings of three, four, or five characters.
     • 2 for strings of more than five characters.

     For example, performing a fuzzy search query for the term "catchr" with a degree of fuzziness of 1, finds matches like "catch" (by deleting 1 character) and "catcher" (by adding 1 character), but does not find matches like "catches" (by adding 1 character and replacing 1, which adds up to an edit distance of 2).

   • Prefix length - Enter the number of initial characters in the entered string to which fuzzy matching does not apply, given that the initial characters match exactly. Increasing this parameter value results in faster search queries.

   For example, performing a fuzzy search query for the term "windwo" with a prefix length of 3, does not apply fuzzy search to the first 3 characters "win," and applies fuzzy search to the rest of the characters to find matches like "window," "winter," "winner," and so on.

   • Maximum expansion terms - Enter the number of alternative spellings for the search string that you want to allow while searching. Decreasing this parameter value results in faster search queries, but might not return as many potential matches.

   For example, performing a fuzzy search query for the term "codngi" with 2 maximum expansion terms, finds only 2 matches like "code" and "coding".

4. Click Submit.

For more information about how Elasticsearch implements fuzzy search queries, go to the Elasticsearch website at elastic.co.

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