Re:Thoughts on Algolia vs. Solr and Elasticsearch
by softwaredoug on Sunday June 12, 2016 @07:15AM
(#11887584)
True though this assumes these direct words are mentioned in the text (assuming know synonyms). Algolia has basic synonym functionality but ES gives you a lot more power here.
Further the more words you remove, the less constrained the results get possibly creating a lot of noise. Though I assume you remove based on document frequency, which helps.
This would be a problem with this strategy regardless of search engine (ES or Algolia)
Re:Thoughts on Algolia vs. Solr and Elasticsearch
by redox_ on Sunday June 12, 2016 @07:32AM
(#11887626)
Algolia has actually a very decent synonyms support:
* mono & multi-words synonyms,
* typo-tolerance is compliant with synonyms,
* matching synonyms are highlighted,
* prefix search works also on synonyms (even on multi words).
* dedicated API endpoints (leveraging existing synonyms but also Algolia's "alternative corrections" and "placeholders")
* new edition UI (with search & filtering capabilities)
* one/bi direction synonyms
Re:Thoughts on Algolia vs. Solr and Elasticsearch
by softwaredoug on Sunday June 12, 2016 @08:20AM
(#11887768)
nice I stand corrected. The first list is what I knew about!
This is actually an interesting dividing line. As you get more sophisticated modeling fuzzier concepts over just synonyms (synonyms are just one tool for this) then I think you get out of algolias sweet spot. When text pushed into a feature space (which happens quite a lot when you're mapping vernaculars) you begin to gain more from Solr and ESs depth of customizability.
Algolia comes with a lot of pre-defined tuning that are good for most use cases (see https://blog.algolia.com/inside-the-algolia-engine-part-3-qu... for more details).
That said there is always some tuning to have perfect result for a specific use case. There is no engine that provide perfect results out of the box without any tuning.