Configuring search synonyms for user names

You can configure the search feature to recognize synonyms of names for improved search results.

Fastpath: Admin Console: System > Settings > Search, then User Search > Synonyms

You can set up synonyms for the names of users to improves results for user searches. For example, you might want to set up "James, Jim, Jimmy" or "Susan, Suzy, Susie".

Synonyms are language-specific. If you have multiple languages enabled, you need to enable them per language. For more information about enabling search for multiple languages, see Enabling content search in multiple languages.

Note that by default, new synonyms work only on new users. If you want to apply new synonyms to preexisting users, you need to rebuild the User Search index, which may take significant time and can affect system resources. For more information, see Reindexing user search.

To set up search synonyms:

  1. In the Admin Console, go to System > Settings > Search, then open the User Search > Synonyms.
  2. Under Synonyms, type in a comma-separated list of synonyms for user names.
  3. Click Add Synonyms.
  4. Rebuild the content search index, as described in Reindexing user search.

The synonyms for terms and names are added to the system and will be available for the newly created items.

Warning: Before you rebuild the community index, consider performance and the needs of your site users. We recommend that you do not reindex search manually during peak usage hours, for example, or during a site-wide campaign or an event that results in high usage.