Stemming is a method for matching word variations. SearchBlox provides out-of-the-box stemming support for content in 37 languages and the option to enable/disable stemming on an individual document collection basis.

Enabling Stemming

  • Stemming can be enabled or disabled in collection settings as in the screenshot.
  • By default, the spelling suggestions will be disabled in collections.
  • Clear and Index the collection after the change.
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Stemming in Search

  • By enabling stemming, inflected words are reduced to a root form.
  • Inflection refers to words taking different forms to express differences in tense, numbers, gender, etc. Most languages are inflected in this way.
  • For example, running, runs and ran are the inflected forms of run.
  • If a root word is searched, documents with inflected words and root words will be returned.
  • When stemming is enabled, if you search for the word wonder, documents with wonders, wondering, wondered, wonderful, etc., will be returned as results.
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  • Similarly, searching for inflected words ("wondering") will list documents with root and inflected words in the results.
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  • When stemming is disabled, only the words searched, and not the inflected forms, will appear in the results.
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Important Information:

Stemming can be enabled or disabled in SearchBlox’s collection settings. After saving the changes made, the collection needs to be cleared and then re-indexed for it to take effect.