Synonyms

Synonyms can be a powerful tool for improving the accuracy and relevance of search results in the regular search. In the Synonyms widget, you can view and edit all registered synonyms for the selected project. If needed, the synonym list can also be managed directly via our API.

There are two types of synonyms supported: symmetric synonyms and asymmetric synonyms.

Symmetric Synonyms

Symmetric synonyms are interchangeable — any word in the group is considered equivalent to the others. This is useful when multiple words or phrases have the same meaning and should be treated as equal in search.

Format:

word1,word2,word3

Example:

TV,Television,Televisions,TVs gigabyte,gigabytes,GB,gib

All terms in the group are treated as synonyms of each other in both indexing and query time.

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Asymmetric Synonyms

Asymmetric synonyms define a one-way mapping — one term is replaced by one or more alternatives. This is useful when you want to broaden a query but not reverse the relationship.

Format:

sourceTerm => targetTerm1, targetTerm2

Examples:

pixima => pixma bbbfoo => bbbfoo, bbbbar

In these examples, pixima will be interpreted as pixma, but not the other way around. Similarly, bbbfoo will be expanded to include both bbbfoo and bbbbar during search.

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Guidelines for Editing Synonyms

• Use commas to separate words in symmetric synonym groups
• Use => to define asymmetric (one-way) relationships.
• Lines beginning with # are treated as comments and ignored by the search engine.
• Be cautious with ambiguous terms that might lead to irrelevant results.
• Changes take effect immediately after editing, but due to a caching layer, there may be a short delay before they are fully reflected in search results.