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javasearchsolrsearch-enginesolrj

Solr highlights shorter similar words

Looking for some help in pointing me in the right direction. I am new user to SOLR and am using solrj to pull data back from the search engine.

Everything seems to work fine except the highlighting not working as expected. If I search for the word Operational, I do get hits on the word operational but they are not highlighted. The only words that are highlighted are Operation.

Same thing happens with the following words:

  • Commander ---> command is highlighted
  • Personal ---> person is highlighted
  • Understanding --> understand is highlighted
  • developmental --> development is highlighted
  • operational --> operation is highlighted

Another thing I noticed was 4 or 5 letter words have not problem being highlighted when searched for, just the longer words.

Thanks.

Solution

  • This highlighting behavior is due to the use of a Stemmer in your fieldType for the field against which you are requesting highlights. When you query for operational the stemmer is reducing the word down to operation and finding the highlight against that term. I would recommend having a separate field with a field type that does not include a stemmer and return highlighting for that field.