Elasticsearch Blueprints

Improving the search experience using stemming

Stemming is the process where we convert an English word to its base form.

Some of the examples are shown as follows:

[ running , ran  ] => run
[ laughing ,  laugh , laughed ] => laugh

With this, our search would be a lot better. When someone searches for run, then all documents, no matter whether they consist the word running or ran, will also be shown as a match.

Note

This is possible because we apply the analyzer used for indexing on the search side too.

To achieve this, we have two approaches:

• The algorithmic approach: In this approach, we use a generic language-based algorithm to convert words to their stems or base form
• The dictionary-based approach: In this approach, we use a lookup mechanism to map ...