Fredhopper automatically corrects misspelled search terms, e.g. televisino is corrected to television.

Prerequisites

Ensure the spell index contains only non-stemmed content. The spell pass uses stemmed content.

How it works

FAS holds a catalog-specific index of spelling alternatives (e.g. women and woman) to which FAS compares the misspelled search term (e.g. womem). For each alternative the distance to the misspelled search term is calculated, e.g. between womem/women this is 1 spelling character, between womem/woman this is 2 spelling characters. Based on the distance FAS selects possible spelling alternatives.

Next, FAS ranks the selected spelling alternatives based on:

• Distance to the misspelled search term, e.g. women is a better suggestion than woman (distance 1 vs. distance 2)

• Frequency of the alternative in the catalog, e.g. women is a better suggestion than nomem (many products are in the women category vs. few NoMem batteries)

The top-ranked alternatives are used as spell corrections for the misspelled search term. Depending on its configuration, Fredhopper immediately uses the alternatives (We searched also for ...) or searches only for the misspelled term and provides the users with further suggestions (Did you mean ...?)

How it is configured

FAS allows users to control the two main settings:

• Maximum edit distance until which an alternative is considered to be similar to the search term.
• Maximal number of spell alternatives that are used.
• Run query with spell alternatives to indicate whether the query should be executed as a "Did you mean?" querry (no), or a "We also searched for" query (yes).

The following table provides best practice settings depending on the preferred tolerance level:

To adjust the settings log into the Merchandising Studio, and perform the following actions:

1. Go to System > Search > Search passes
2. Select Spell check pass (click on the name)
3. Change the settings in the lower part of the page
4. Apply your changes.