The effectiveness of a concept search can depend on a variety of elements including the dataset being searched and the search engine that is used to process queries and display results. However, most concept search engines work best for certain kinds of queries:
- Effective queries are composed of enough text to adequately convey the intended concepts. Effective queries may include full sentences, paragraphs, or even an entire documents. Queries composed of just a few words are not as likely to return the most relevant results.
- Effective queries do not include concepts in a query that are not the object of the search. Including too many unrelated concepts in a query can negatively affect the relevancy of the result items. For example, searching for information about boating on the Mississippi River would be more likely to return relevant results than a search for boating on the Mississippi River on a rainy day in the middle of the summer in 1967.
- Effective queries are expressed in a full-text, natural language style similar in style to the documents being searched. For example, using queries composed of excerpts from an introductory science textbook would not be as effective for concept searching if the dataset being searched is made up of advanced, college-level science texts. Substantial queries that better represent the overall concepts, styles, and language of the items for which the query is being conducted are generally more effective.
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