Search

How do search results on Customer Portal get highlighted?

Environment:

Highlighted Search Terms, Customer Portal (CP)

Resolution:

When a search is performed on the customer portal, the results that come back may or may not contain highlighted words that reference the keyword used for the search.

The highlighting may appear to occur randomly, but it is in fact dependant on the values contained under the "stem" column in keyword_searches table.

Whenever a search is performed on the customer portal, the keywords used to perform the search are stored in the  keyword_searches table.

This table also contains a column called "stem" where the keyword is associated to a stem. For instance:

-for keyword purcha*, the stem is purcha%
-for keyword temp*, the stem is temp%
-for keyword templ*, the stem is templ%

The results of the search will return all answers including words that contain the keyword (for temp*, it will return answers contains words such as "template", "temper", "temperature" etc.).

However, the search will highlight only those words that are closest to the stem (so in this case it should highlight only "temper", as "template" and "temperature" are too different from the stem i.e. temp%).

When performing a search using templ*, the stem will be templ% and words like "template" are closer to the stem, so they will get highlighted.

For information on configuring this feature, refer to Highlighting keywords in a search.