| Synonyms
Let's assume, however, that Jan was not able to match the bird book pictures with the mystery bird to identify it as a peregrine falcon. How can we use the query concepts identified to better hone in on what type of bird it is? One useful place to begin is with synonyms. Jan knows the mystery bird is a hunting bird. Jan lists other synonyms that come to mind for hunting bird. We provide AltaVista document counts for these synonyms: hunting bird* 2,663Jan, however, suspects neither of these terms is the "correct" synonym. Attacking this problem from another angle, Jan writes down specific kinds of birds of prey: hawkUsing these three keywords, Jan's search immediately turns up a number of sites referring to raptors, the technical term for hunting birds. Jan finds a great site on raptors that also has pictures that positively identifies the mystery bird as a peregrine falcon [1]. Jan also learns that vultures are raptors, too. The best synonyms provide relatively complete coverage for the subject at hand and are "pitched" for the right informational objective. In Jan's case, it was needing to identify a specific bird, and a more technical term like "raptor" fit the bill. Were Jan's interest more oriented to references in novels, perhaps "hunting bird" or "bird of prey" would have been more appropriate. An illustration of a good synonym with proper coverage is:
Good coverage is not always possible. Where not possible, provide a couple of alternate terms (that is, synonyms). But, remember, always play the numbers game. Your query terms are limited so choose them carefully. Having determined the mystery bird to be a peregrine falcon, Jan considers whether synonyms for this term are also worthwhile. Based on what Jan has learned, these are the possible synonyms and document counts from AltaVista: peregrine falcon* 14,510Again, note the three synonym counts do not exactly sum due to indexing gaps by the search engines. This example is a good instance where multiple synonyms do not buy enough increased coverage to be warranted. peregrine falcon is the most used description of this bird; adding the other terms increases coverage by only about 15%. You need not get actual document counts from search engines in order to weigh such choices in your own queries. Simply use good judgment of what you're gaining - if anything - by adding more synonyms to your query subjects. Common sense should be a sufficient guide. A thesaurus, a dictionary, personal knowledge or a preliminary Internet search can all be worthwhile places to find synonyms for the major subject(s) in your query. Generally, you should not waste the time thinking about synonyms for other terms in your queries, unless you know them to have very poor coverage. Footnotes:
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