Searching with questions that are more complete sentences gives fewer or no results

[bengolder]

During user testing, a user searched for "What benefits parole" then "what benefits can I get" and a series of more "complete" questions. Each version gave fewer results, until no results were shown.

I'm not sure how to handle this, but it's clear that a user would expect to be able to type in a full question that is covered by the content and get something in return.

Ideas for addressing this:

• auto generate fuller question variants for the search index, maybe upload them as synonyms
• ignore prepositions and common words ("What", "I", etc.)

[bengolder]

maybe use google search or add tips to the "no results found" result

[bengolder]

Explore the possibility of just using a google search plugin

[bengolder]

One suggestion: use help text to tell people to use key words instead of full sentences

[bengolder]

An example: "can i expunge my record under prop 64?"

[bengolder]

I was able to create a google custom search, but the downside is that it will list ads in the results for any search: https://cse.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=002655949919604448680:ir_ce9tutfs

In other words, using google site search would create ads and would not allow us to style or manage the results