Synonyms are interchangeable terms that can be used to expand a query to retrieve more or better search results. For example, “TV” and “television” can be considered synonyms. When a user enters one of these terms, Managed Fusion can also look for results containing the other term. More specifically, synonyms are:
  • Words that mean the same thing, within the context where they are used.
  • Used in searches. And synonym expansion allows Managed Fusion to return results that match the meaning of the query terms, but not the words themselves.
  • Important for mapping query terms such as:
    • Acronyms to their names
    • Jargon to public terms
    • Misspellings to correct spellings
    • Old to new personal or corporate names
    • Bridging the gap between the user vocabulary and terms in the original text
Managed Fusion uses the Solr synonyms.txt and Solr collections, which are managed by Managed Fusion. Solr itself manages a set of resources to apply synonym expansion, with configuration through the Managed Fusion API and the Managed Fusion UI. However, Managed Fusion synonyms are not interchangeable with Solr synonyms files. If you have a Managed Fusion license, see also the Synonym Detection Jobs which automatically detects synonyms to use in query rewriting.
See Use Synonym Detection for more information.
Based on the release, synonyms are automatically created based on your AI-generated data. When you navigate to Relevance > Rules > Rewrite and select the Synonym tab, the application displays the Synonym Detection screen. For more information, see:
When you manually add new synonym pairs, subsequent job runs use those documents as input for machine learning to improve the job’s output. Unlike job-generated documents, manually-added query rewriting documents are never overwritten by new job output.
Synonym Detection screen
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Reviewing auto-generated synonym pairs

Synonyms that are automatically generated by the synonym jobs are assigned the following status value:
  • Pending The confidence level is ambiguous, and the result must be reviewed by a user before it can be deployed. It will only be moved from the _query_rewrite_staging collection to the _query_rewrite collection when its status has changed to “Approved” and it has been published.
    By default, all results from a synonym job are set to “Pending,” since there are usually a limited number of synonyms, and synonym expansion can have high impact on relevancy.

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How to review a pending synonym pair result

  1. Navigate to Relevance > Rules > Rewrite.
  2. Select Synonym tab. The application displays the Synonym Detection screen.
    Notice the Status facet on the left. Click Pending to view only the items that need review.
  3. Click the Edit icon icon next to the synonym pair.
  4. In the Status column, select either Approved or Denied. Where alternative synonyms were detected, you can click Suggestions to view and select them as replacements for the displayed synonym pair.
    Although the Confidence field is also editable, changing its value makes no difference.
  5. Click the Close icon next to the updated synonym pair: Close a synonym pair
Approving a synonym pair does not automatically deploy it to the _query_rewrite collection. When you have finished your review, you must click Publish to deploy your changes.

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Adding new synonym pairs

You can manually add synonym pairs in addition to any generated by Managed Fusion:

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How to add a synonym pair

  1. Navigate to Relevance > Rules > Rewrite.
  2. Select Synonym tab. The application displays the Synonym Detection screen.
  3. At the bottom of the rules list, click the Add icon icon. A new synonym pair appears at the top of the list.
  4. Enter the query term.
    It is not necessary to set a confidence value.
  5. Select the synonym pair’s status, depending on whether you want to deploy it the next time you publish your changes (“Approved”) or save it for further review (“Pending”).
  6. Click the check mark to save the new synonym pair.

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Publishing your changes

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How to publish updated synonym pairs

  1. In the Synonym Detection screen, click the PUBLISH button. Managed Fusion prompts you to confirm that you want to publish your changes.
  2. Click PUBLISH.
You can un-publish a query rewrite by changing its status to denied then clicking PUBLISH.

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Synonym types

There are three kinds of search synonyms, depending on the requirements of the search for each specific term.

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Replacement synonyms

Replacements are used to change the query, to replace it with a more standard term or terms. For example: 
 lucid => lucidworks
In this case, “lucid” by itself not an approved term, so there should be no instances where the company name is a partial word.

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One-way expansion synonyms

One-way expansions expand original terms with more standard terms while retaining the original term. However, they do not do the opposite, meaning they do not expand standard terms to the original non-standard terms: 
 monitor => monitor, display
In this case, “display” is the standard term, but “monitor” is the original term.

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Multi-way expansion synonyms

Where each term is considered equally standard, multi-way synonyms expand the query so any items with any of the terms is retrieved: 
 login,logon,signin,signon
This example shows terms that are used interchangeably by authors. For this search engine, there is no need to distinguish among them, and considerable value in increasing recall to find all items discussing this topic. However, other content stores may use them differently. Note that “logging” and “signing” have specific meanings in many contexts, so they might not be candidates for synonyms. Example of synonym expansion: Results before synonyms: No results Results after synonyms: Results show Viewing the query using the debug=true parameter shows how it is expanded: 
 "querystring": "logon",
 "parsedquery": "(+DisjunctionMaxQuery((Synonym(_text_:login _text_:logon _text_:signin _text_:signon))))/no_coord",
 "parsedquery_toString": "+(Synonym(_text_:login _text_:logon _text_:signin _text_:signon))",

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Multi-word synonyms

To enable multi-word synonyms in Managed Fusion, create an Additional Parameter stage for disabling the split on whitespace tokenization process (which applies to synonyms only): 
 sow=false
Using eDisMax, this allows the new Solr SynonymGraphFilter to create the graph representations of token streams containing overlapping synonyms of varying word counts, and expand the queries with additional terms. If using a less-than sign (<) with eDisMax, it must be escaped using a backslash. Examples: 
 appstudio => app studio
 signup =>signup,sign up
 login,log in,logon,log on,signin,sign in,signon,sign on
Multi-word synonyms work just like single-word synonyms, expanding the parsed query with additional query terms. For Solr details, see: Multi-Word Synonyms: Solr Adds Query-Time Support.