Creating a stop-word list

Stop words are common words that you want to exclude from searches. For example, suppose you enter the following search phrase:

Dog trainers who are really smart and who are close to me

The words who, and, are, to, and me are extremely common and do not help to distinguish one search result from another. When performing a search, Brightspot can remove those words from the phrase and then search for the following:

Dog trainers really smart close

Removing stop words also improves relevance. An item with a lot of stop words, such as and and or, may seem very relevant compared to another item that uses less of such words—even though the actual content may be less relevant.

To create or modify a stop-words list:

1. Search for and open your site’s site search.
2. From the Stop Words selection field, select Create New. A New Stop Words widget appears.
3. In the Name field, type a name for the stop-words list.
4. Under Stop Words, add new stop words, or click remove to remove existing ones.
5. Click Save.