Stopwords and Synonyms

Stopwords and synonyms help you refine search quality by filtering out noise and ensuring related terms match each other.

Stopwords

Stopwords are common words that the search engine ignores when processing queries. Removing filler words helps the engine focus on the meaningful parts of a query.

Examples: "the", "and", "is", "a", "an", "in", "to"

Managing Stopwords

1. Navigate to the Search Configuration page.
2. In the Stopwords section, type a word and press Enter to add it.
3. Click the remove button on any stopword to delete it.

When to Use Stopwords

• Add language-specific filler words that aren't meaningful for search (e.g. "der", "die", "das" for German blogs).
• Remove overly common words that appear in nearly every post and dilute search results.
• Be conservative -- Only add words that truly carry no meaning. Removing a word like "react" would be harmful if you have programming content.

Synonyms

Synonyms let you define groups of terms that should be treated as equivalent. When a reader searches for any term in a synonym group, results matching any of the other terms in the group are also returned.

How Synonym Groups Work

Synonyms are multi-way -- all terms in a group are treated as interchangeable. For example, if you create a synonym group with "JS", "JavaScript", and "ECMAScript":

• A search for "JS" also returns results containing "JavaScript" or "ECMAScript"
• A search for "JavaScript" also returns results containing "JS" or "ECMAScript"
• And so on

Managing Synonyms

1. Navigate to the Search Configuration page.
2. In the Synonyms section, click Add synonym group.
3. Enter at least two terms that should be treated as equivalent.
4. Click the add button to save the group.
5. To remove a synonym group, click the remove button next to it.

Common Use Cases

Tips

• Check your no-hits queries regularly. If readers search for a term that your content uses differently, add a synonym.
• Each synonym group should contain genuinely equivalent terms. Don't group loosely related words -- that will make search results less precise.
• Each group requires at least two terms.