How are compound words treated in searches?

What is a compound word?

A compound word is a word that consists of two or more nouns that together form a word with its own meaning, which is very typical in some languages, like the Scandinavian languages.

How is a compound word treated in a search?

When searching, a compound word is treated as its own word, and the words that it is made out of are not considered isolated. This means that the individual words that form the compound word will not be taken into account – neither as stemming for the compound word.

An example of a compound word could be ‘football’. A search for ‘football’ would never trigger results that match a search for ‘foot’ or ‘ball’ alone, just like a search for ‘foot’ wouldn’t trigger results for ‘football’. Even if stemming is taken into account, the stem for ‘football’ is still ‘football’.

In most cases, this standard behavior for compound words will ensure better relevance in search. However, in cases where you would like to make these compound words a little more “flexible”, remember that it is always possible to use synonyms to connect the terms making up the compound word.