In text retrieval, full-text search refers to techniques for searching a single computer-stored document or a collection in a full-text database. Full-text search is distinguished from searches based on See more

When dealing with a small number of documents, it is possible for the full-text-search engine to directly scan the contents of the documents with each query, a strategy called "serial … See more

Recall measures the quantity of relevant results returned by a search, while precision is the measure of the quality of the results returned. Recall is the ratio of relevant results returned to all relevant results. Precision is the ratio of the number of relevant results … See more

Full-text searching is likely to retrieve many documents that are not relevant to the intended search question. Such documents are called false positives (see Type I error). The retrieval of irrelevant documents is often caused by the inherent ambiguity of See more

The deficiencies of full text searching have been addressed in two ways: By providing users with tools that enable them to express their search questions more precisely, and by developing new search algorithms that improve retrieval precision.
Improved querying … See more

The following is a partial list of available software products whose predominant purpose is to perform full-text indexing and searching. Some of these are accompanied with detailed descriptions of their theory of operation or internal algorithms, which … See more

• Pattern matching and string matching
• Compound term processing
• Enterprise search
• Information extraction See more