Apr
3
Smarter Search, Part 2: Better Query Interpretation
Posted by Jeff Lash: Product Director, MD Consult
Yesterday we presented the first in our five-part series about what we’re doing “behind the scenes” to make MD Consult’s search smarter.
Today, we’ll cover how searching on MD Consult will be improved through better query interpretation.
One change that is being made is to better interpret queries correctly. Someone searching on “heart attack cancer” is really looking for “‘heart attack’ and cancer,” not “heart and ‘attack cancer.’”
These improvements include:
- Better interpretation of punctuation (hyphenations, apostrophes, semi-colons, etc.)
- Example: Regardless of whether someone searches for “bell’s palsy†or “bells palsy,†we will provide the same search results.
- Better recognition of specific queries
- Example: A query for a specific ISSN or ISBN will now return the appropriate journal or book.
These types of searches have always been possible on MD Consult and usually produce the desired results, but these improvements will ensure they are nearly always interpreted correctly.
We’ve covered the first two parts in our series — Improved synonymy and Better query interpretation — and tomorrow we’ll discuss search refinements.
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