Solr Spell Check: Improving User Experience and Search Results

    In the realm of search engines, providing accurate and relevant results is paramount. However, users often make typographical errors or misspell words when entering search queries. To address this challenge, implementing a spell check feature in your search engine can significantly enhance the user experience by suggesting correct spellings and improving search accuracy.

    Apache Solr, a powerful open-source search platform, offers robust capabilities for integrating spell check functionality. By leveraging Solr's spell check components, you can ensure that your search engine not only handles misspelled queries gracefully but also guides users towards the most relevant results. This blog will walk you through the process of setting up and configuring spell check in Solr, highlighting key considerations and best practices to optimize your search engine's performance.

    Whether you're a developer looking to enhance your application's search capabilities or a business aiming to improve customer satisfaction, understanding and implementing spell check in Solr is a valuable skill. Let's dive into the details and explore how you can make your search engine smarter and more user-friendly.

Configuring Spell Check in Solr

Solr provides several approaches to spell checking, including IndexBasedSpellChecker
and DirectSolrSpellChecker. We can added Settings for Spell check in Solrconfig.xml file. Here’s how to configure spell check in Solr:  .
  1. Under <requestHandler name="/select" class="solr.SearchHandler"> added below snippet for spell check.
<lst name="defaults">
<str name="echoParams">explicit</str>
<int name="rows">10</int>
<str name="df">title_t</str>
<str name="spellcheck.dictionary">CustomSpellChecker</str>
<str name="spellcheck">off</str>
<str name="spellcheck.extendedResults">true</str>
<str name="spellcheck.count">5</str>
<str name="spellcheck.alternativeTermCount">5</str>
<str name="spellcheck.maxResultsForSuggest">5</str>
<str name="spellcheck.collate">true</str>
<str name="spellcheck.collateExtendedResults">true</str>
<str name="spellcheck.maxCollationTries">10</str>
<str name="spellcheck.maxCollations">5</str>
</lst>
<arr name="last-components">
<str>spellcheck</str>
</arr>

      2. Under <searchComponent name="spellcheck" class= "solr.SpellCheckComponent"> 
           added below snippet for making spell check work.
<lst name="spellchecker">
<str name="name">CustomSpellChecker</str>
<str name="field">title_t</str>
<str name="classname">solr.DirectSolrSpellChecker</str>
<!--The spellcheck distance measure used, the default is the internal levenshtein-->
<str name="distanceMeasure">internal</str>
<!-- minimum accuracy needed to be considered a valid spellcheck suggestion -->
<float name="accuracy">0.5</float>
<!-- the maximum #edits we consider when enumerating terms: can be 1 or 2 -->
<int name="maxEdits">2</int>
<!-- the minimum shared prefix when enumerating terms -->
<int name="minPrefix">1</int>
<!-- maximum number of inspections per result. -->
<int name="maxInspections">5</int>
<!-- minimum length of a query term to be considered for correction -->
<int name="minQueryLength">3</int>
<!-- maximum threshold of documents a query term can appear to be considered for correction -->
<float name="maxQueryFrequency">0.01</float>
<!-- uncomment this to require suggestions to occur in 1% of the documents <float name="thresholdTokenFrequency">.01</float>-->
</lst>

      3. Rebuild the IndexAfter configuration, rebuild your Sitecore indexes to ensure Solr                                               has the latest data.

Test these changes 

Browser this URL with Spellcheck word

http://localhost:8984/solr/Solr_Core_index/select?spellcheck.q=vdeo&spellcheck=on 

It will show all the available words which matches the searched word. We are taking the first work with Higher frequency.


Final Thoughts

The Solr Spell Checker is a powerful tool to enhance user experience in Sitecore-powered websites. By catching typos and offering intelligent suggestions, it ensures users stay on track and find what they’re looking for fast.

Whether you're building a product search or a knowledge base, integrating spell check is a small step that makes a big difference.

Happy Searching 😀😀

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