Priority given to exact phrases

[Vernon]

In working with a number of bookshops we are trying to enhance how visitors return book search results. A lot or people want to type in the book's title and find an exact match to their phrase.

However, if they get the title slightly wrong, the exact phrase matching is rather unforgiving. So to soften the search we have tried searching for, say, Rowlings "Goblet of Fire" as

"Goblet of Fire" Goblet Fire (with "any" search item turned on)

in the hope that the phrase, if matching, would come up first, followed by any title that contained Goblet or Fire. So a search by a hopeful visitor for "Goblet of flame" would fail on the phrase but pick up all books that mention Goblet.

Yes, this works in finding results, but there is no preference given to the phrase, and the hoped-for result can be buried after "The Boy Scout's Guide to lighting a Fire" and "A Guide to Medieval Goblets", and so on. I note in your version 6 details that "This includes preference given to words that are found closer together on the same page." Will this solve my problem and so I just need to be patient until the release arrives?

Many thanks.

[Ray]

The V6 improvements in giving preference to words found closer together may help. I think even more important in your case, is the V6 support for synonyms in exact phrases. This means you can add a synonym so that "fire"="flame", and a person searching for "goblet of flame" will find "goblet of fire".

On top of this, there will be a new stemming feature, which means that singular/plural words will match as well (e.g. "goblets of fires" will match).

So I think all of these things in V6 will be of help.