Boolean
search:
A search allowing the inclusion or exclusion of
documents containing certain words through the
use of operators such as AND, NOT and OR.
Concept
search:
A search for documents related conceptually to a
word, rather than specifically containing the
word itself.
Full-text index:
An index containing
every word of every document cataloged,
including stop words (defined below).
Fuzzy
search:
A search that will find matches even when words
are only partially spelled or misspelled.
Index:
The
searchable catalog of documents created by
search engine software. Also called "catalog."
Index is often used as a synonym for search
engine. Index is commonly pluralized as
"indices." However, Search Engine Watch instead
uses the alternative plural form "indexes."
Keyword
search:
A search for documents containing one or more
words that are specified by a user.
Phrase
search:
A search for documents containing a exact
sentence or phrase specified by a user.
Precision:
The degree in which a search engine lists
documents matching a query. The more matching
documents that are listed, the higher the
precision. For example, if a search engine lists
80 documents found to match a query but only 20
of them contain the search words, then the
precision would be 25%.
Proximity search:
A search where users to specify that documents
returned should have the words near each other.
Query-By-Example:
A search where a
user instructs an engine to find more documents
that are similar to a particular document. Also
called "find similar."
Recall:
Related to precision, this is the degree in
which a search engine returns all the matching
documents in a collection. There may be 100
matching documents, but a search engine may only
find 80 of them. It would then list these 80 and
have a recall of 80%.
Relevancy:
How well a document provides the information a
user is looking for, as measured by the user.
Search
Engine:
The software that searches an index and returns
matches. Search engine is often used
synonymously with spider and index, although
these are separate components that work with the
engine.
Spider:
The software that scans documents and adds them
to an index by following links. Spider is often
used as a synonym for search engine.
Stemming:
The ability for a search to include the "stem"
of words. For example, stemming allows a user to
enter "swimming" and get back results also for
the stem word "swim."
Stop
words:
Conjunctions, prepositions and articles and
other words such as AND, TO and A that appear
often in documents yet alone may contain little
meaning.
Thesaurus:
A list of synonyms a search engine can use to
find matches for particular words if the words
themselves don't appear in documents.