Skip to main content

Compound Words

After exact matching and typo correction, the search engine can also try compound and split forms of the query words. This is controlled by a single setting, split_join_tokens, which lives under the typo_tolerance attribute of a search profile.

Compound Words (split_join_tokens)

Shoppers do not know whether your products are named waterproof or water proof. split_join_tokens controls whether the search engine treats compound words and their split forms as equivalent, by generating split variants (nonsticknon stick) and joined variants (water proofwaterproof) of the query:

  • fallback (default): try the query as typed first; only generate split/joined variants when results are insufficient.
  • always: always generate split/joined variants alongside the original query.
  • off: never generate split/joined variants.

Consider three products — waterproof, water proof jacket, and non stick skillet:

Queryofffallback (default)always
waterproofwaterproof onlywaterproof only — the exact match is sufficientwaterproof and water proof jacket
nonstickNothingnon stick skillet — no exact match, so the split is triednon stick skillet
{ "typo_tolerance": { "split_join_tokens": "always" } }
Ask External AI