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Just so I'm sure we are on the same page... And BTW, I fully agree with your comments about not bothering the user to understand whether stemming is on or off.. or what the heck stemming really is
But is seems that a check box option to perform an EXACT match -- especially when stemming is ON -- would be a meaningful enhancement.
Stemming is either off or on, and this setting is selected when the index is build. And the setting modifies the structure of the index file so swapping this setting requires the index to be rebuilt. (And 99% of users would not understand an option on the search form to stem or not, if there was such a thing. Typical search users already fail to understand the more basic wildcard and phrase searching).
For example, with stemming turned on, I search for the term 'spiritize'. In the results set I get a list of pages where any derivative exists - BUT ONLY THE FIRST-ENCOUNTERED DERIVATIVE. Mostly I see hits for 'spirit'. I see no hits for 'spiritize' b/c these typically appear in the actual page after the word 'spirit'.
If the first hit of ANY/ALL DERIVATIVES could be displayed in the result set -- this would somewhat mitigate the issue.
Also, an option for an EXACT MATCH, even if stemming is selected, would be helpful.
NOTE: Depending on when you visit my website, stemming may be on or off, as I continue my experimentation.
To be honest, I don't think I've seen any website search engine that displays EVERY hit in context. This would be completely unusable for most sites. A search for a common word would practically dump the entire page content for each result.
I had a look at Copernic, and I couldn't find an example of this. They didn't even seem to have a site search for their own website, which is a bit ironic.
As explained in the links above, we try to reach a compromise between a practical summary and a detailed one. We return more than one fragment of context when there are multiple search terms. More than one (as opposed to ALL) fragments for a single search term would be nice, but it is not currently possible.
No, there is no easy way to add additional context fragments for a single search term.
If you have "fields" of data that you need to be listed per search result, perhaps you should consider the "Custom Meta Fields" option. It's hard for me to tell whether this applies to you without seeing your website and what you have in mind. But this would allow you to show a specific list of attributes/fields for each search result, which would be better suited in some cases.
When searching my .htm files for a particular term that I know occurs multiple times in a given file, the result set only shows the first occurrence of the term within the file.
I've looked to see if their is some 'consolidation' option I have overlooked, but don't see anything.
I would like all occurrences to have a result set entry.
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