How do synonyms work?

How do synonyms work?

Synonyms are used to enhance your knowledge base and improve search results.

Synonyms that are considered for search across any of your Knowledge Bases (KB) consist of the following:

  • Local synonyms: The synonym repository in the KB which is created and maintained by your content management team. Local synonyms typically include words that are related to your business and serve as an extension to the list of global synonyms.
  • Global synonyms: Language-specific global synonyms that Bold360 AI uses which are relevant across all verticals. Global synonyms defined for the English KBs are listed below:
  • app, application
  • 1st, first
  • about, regard
  • basket, cart
  • ... and 170 others

It is important to note that there is a generic language thesaurus is much broader than the synonyms that are considered by Bold360 AI on a language level - either global or local.

Bold360 AI periodically updates the thesaurus used at the language level. When defining synonyms specific to your Knowledge Base, auto-suggestions are presented based on the general language corpus:

In addition, the search engine knows language morphology, which makes it smart enough to know that:

  • car = cars
  • child = children
  • really = real
  • etc.

Finally, the synonyms and NLP algorithm capabilities in Bold360 AI know how to deal with 'weak' words, such as "with", "what", "do", "can", and "can't", therefore you do not have to define these synonyms in your environment.

Note:
  • If you add these synonyms manually, it may reduce your performance in the Knowledge Base.
  • When a customer uses a synonym rather than the word that is present in an intent (article title), the intent matching score may be reduced.

The following is an example of global and local synonyms:

When you look at the synonyms of create, you see that "add" and "make" are defined locally. At the same time, "build" and "open" are defined as global synonyms that are also applied when a customer enters an intent.

What synonyms should I add to my Bold360 AI account?

You should add synonyms that are relevant to your business. For example, if your company sells electronics, you should add synonyms from the world of electronics:

  • Amplifier, receiver, power supply
  • Surround, stereo, speakers
  • TV, LED, 3D

Synonyms are not a transitory property, therefore you can define two different synonym groups where the same term would appear, but its synonyms would not be considered across groups. For instance group I: schedule = book; group II: book = notebook.

  • If an incoming search includes the word schedule, it would consider intents that include book, but not those that include notebook.
  • If an incoming search includes the word book it would consider intents that include both schedule and notebook.

As the Bold360 AI NLP has a built-in set of morphology tools, there is no need to capture synonyms to address the following:

  • compounds, such as "mymusic" and "my music"
  • use of punctuation, such as dashes (e.g. "my-music" and "my music")
  • typos
  • different tenses (e.g. "run" and "running"). However, you must associate a specific tense to a group of synonyms ("broke" with "poor", and "no money").

It is important to note that the use of synonyms by Bold360 AI's NLP may impact search results, because when you replace a term in the user's query with a synonym, the matching score is slightly reduced.

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