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Searching with questions that are more complete sentences gives fewer or no results #57
Description
During user testing, a user searched for "What benefits parole" then "what benefits can I get" and a series of more "complete" questions. Each version gave fewer results, until no results were shown.
I'm not sure how to handle this, but it's clear that a user would expect to be able to type in a full question that is covered by the content and get something in return.
Ideas for addressing this:
- auto generate fuller question variants for the search index, maybe upload them as synonyms
- ignore prepositions and common words ("What", "I", etc.)
Activity
bengolder commentedon Oct 18, 2017
maybe use google search or add tips to the "no results found" result
bengolder commentedon Dec 12, 2017
Explore the possibility of just using a google search plugin
bengolder commentedon Dec 12, 2017
One suggestion: use help text to tell people to use key words instead of full sentences
bengolder commentedon Jan 10, 2018
An example: "can i expunge my record under prop 64?"
bengolder commentedon Jan 10, 2018
I was able to create a google custom search, but the downside is that it will list ads in the results for any search: https://cse.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=002655949919604448680:ir_ce9tutfs
In other words, using google site search would create ads and would not allow us to style or manage the results