New block link style in search results

We are testing a new link style that turns the extract for a page into a block. The block has a few features that enhance the search results:

• As a user moves their pointer over the block, the block is highlighted.
• While the pointer hovers over the block, the block expands to show more sentences containing the search terms (if any).
• Clicking anywhere in the block brings up the matched document.

The new link style is #3, thus to use it add "/link3" to your search URL. During testing it will be available only in our test search engine, nquery. (That is, use nquery in place of query in your search URL.) You can try it out by searching this blog!

New scoring function for PDF files

The scoring function for PDF files has been changed to achieve two goals:

1. By default, PDF files are penalized so that they appear lower in search results than other document types, such as HTML. This has always been the case, but the penalty has been increased. Still, highly relevant PDFs may appear before less relevant HTML.
2. The /pdf0 option now imposes a much greater penalty. Appending "/pdf0" to a search URL adds a significant penalty to PDFs. In general this means that in the search results PDFs will follow other file types, such as HTML. However, as in the default case, very relevant PDFs may rise in the search output.

Enhanced semantic entities

We have completed a significant upgrade of processing for semantic entities. Semantic entities are items like phone numbers and prices. The basic facility allows queries to match patterns of text that represent instances of the entity. For example, the query "product price", besides matching sentences containing the words "product" and "price", also matches sentences containing "product" and an instance of a price such as "$25". Currently supported entities are: phone numbers, email addresses, postal codes, prices, and times of day.

Are there entities you would like to see added? Send suggestions to Blossom Support.

Controlling search engine guidance

Depending on the results of a search query, the search engine may offer guidance for a follow-on query. For example, if a query generates lots of hits, the search engine may suggest super phrases (queries with more terms) to narrow the search. Alternatively, if a query doesn't generate any hits, the search engine may suggest sub-phrases to widen the search. The suggested phrases appear before the actual hits, if there are any. (See Phrasal Query Suggestions in the Search Library for a discussion of search guidance.)

A new option has been added to the search engine to control the number of suggested super and sub-phrases: phraseN sets the maximum number of suggestions to N. If N is zero, no suggestions are shown. For more details and an example, please see the Search Guide.

New way to control format of search results

As an alternative to using Head and Tail files to control the appearance of search results, you can now use a template file on your website. The benefit of using a template file are

• The file is processed by your webserver, so some server-side processing like includes and scripts are usable.
• The file is read by Blossom each day, so changes you make to the template are automatically reflected in your search results.

For details on using Template Files, please consult the Search Guide section Output Format.

Adaptive ordering of pages

We have begun design of a significant enhancement that takes visitor behavior into account to order pages in response to a query. The basic idea is that when a visitor chooses a particular page in response to a query, the choice is considered a vote for that page being relevant to the query. As a page collect votes, it will be boosted when that query is seen again. Would you like to preview this feature and help us test it? Do you have a suggestion on how the feature might work? Let us know by sending an email to support@blossoft.com.

New Web site goes live

It has been a long time coming: Blossom.com has finally gotten a facelift. We have upgraded both the public site and the Client site. Please bear with us as we continue to iron out any wrinkles. And if you find anything amiss, please send support a message. There are more changes to come, including improvements to the weekly Activity reports. If you have any suggestions, now is a great time to let us hear them.