HR & Compliance Centre unveils new search engine

Searching HR & Compliance Centre has just got easier, quicker, more efficient and personal with the launch of our new state-of-the-art search engine. Enhancements include better relevance, "did you mean?" spelling suggestions, synonym matches, intuitive ways to refine results, a new case title search, better highlighting of search terms in results, new Boolean options for advanced users, and new ways to personalise your search experience.

We know from user feedback, customer research and subscription renewal rates that HR & Compliance Centre customers are happy with the quality of content on HR & Compliance Centre and the ease of navigation around the site, but you have consistently identified searching as an area for potential improvement. So we developed our new search functionality with your help.

You told us that you wanted a richer search experience on HR & Compliance Centre - one that more closely matches the best that is on offer in leading online services, whether aimed at consumers or business and professional users. We have now delivered exactly that.

Our new search delivers improvements across the board:

• more relevant results from quick queries and advanced searches
• dynamic summary text snippets on search results pages, showing highlighted search terms in context in individual items
• automatic use of "stemming" to find matches using all word forms linked to a user's search term(s)
• better matches for "find related articles" queries, based on tighter relevance criteria
• "did you mean?" alternative spelling suggestions where searches produce no results
• automatic synonym matching to ensure that searches for common synonyms bring back all relevant results
• a "refine by phrase" option on search results pages, limiting the results to items that match both the original search term(s) and a selected phrase that appears in related articles
• a new case title search, enabling users who know the name of one or both parties in a particular employment law case to find relevant case reports with one click
• interactive highlighting of search term(s) on item detail pages, allowing users to skip directly to the first appearance of their search term(s) in the item, and then to subsequent or previous appearances
• new search personalisation options, giving users the ability to personalise the advanced search form and the way results are presented when they are logged into the site
• advanced Boolean search options for experienced users, including wildcards, standard AND/OR/NOT/NEAR operators, and enhanced controls allowing the user to specify, for example, the order of appearance and distance of NEAR matches
• a new facility, released in February, allowing users to subscribe to a feed based on any HR & Compliance Centre search

Our new search is powered by Autonomy (external link), the market-leading search solutions company.

Below I explain our new search enhancements in more detail. Please choose between reading on, skipping straight to the areas that interest you using the links above, or simply starting to search the site and experiencing the improvements for yourself.

Whatever you do, please take the time to give us your feedback. We are always keen to hear your views, and we value your suggestions for improvement just as much as, if not more than, praise for a job well done. Please email us or fill in our subscriber feedback form.

 

More relevant results

Our old search measured relevance simply by the number of times the search term(s) entered by the user appeared in the item. This is an unsatisfactory measure for many reasons, not least of which is an inbuilt bias towards longer items. By contrast, the new search takes many factors into account in determining relevance. These include whether the search term(s) appear in the title as well as the main body text and whether they appear alongside other words and phrases that typically appear in similar and related items.

Relevance is also affected by the extent to which the item concerned has been clicked and opened from search results by other users entering the same or similar search terms - so the results will get even more relevant over time as HR & Compliance Centre customers run more searches and open items appearing in the results.

In determining the relevance of items to particular searches, the new search divides longer items into sections - seeking relevance matches at the level of individual paragraphs. This is particularly helpful when it comes to longer items, such as chapters of the employment law reference manual, where it may be only a particular section, rather than the whole item, that is relevant to your query.

Please note that the division of items into sections for search indexing purposes has no impact on article display: the full item will always be displayed when you click a title link to view an item from the search results page.

Users wanting to employ advanced searching techniques should note that section-based indexing does have a beneficial but perhaps unexpected effect on searches involving the Boolean operator "NOT". Take, for example, a search for [maternity NOT pay]. Under the old search, this would return only those items that included the word maternity and not the word pay. The new search will return items where the word maternity appears without the word pay in one or more sections of the items returned. The results may therefore include items where the word pay does indeed appear - but in other sections. So it is important to bear in mind that the new search is determining relevance by looking at matches in sections of items rather than limiting matches crudely to whole items.

Don't forget to use "quote marks" for phrases
If you search for more than one word without using quote marks or Boolean operators such as AND, OR, NOT or NEAR, the new search, like the old one, will assume that you are looking for items that contain all of the words that you have used. Items containing all of the words will appear at the top of the results, while items containing only some will appear lower down.

If it is important for you to identify close matches to a particular phrase, you will obtain better results by putting "double quote marks" around your search phrase. For example, a search for [genuine occupational requirement] will find items where these words - and forms of these words - appear close together in sections. But a search for ["genuine occupational requirement"] will produce a more focused set of results using only this and similar phrases.

 

Summary text snippets

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefitsOur old search showed item titles and fixed item summaries in search results. This meant that whatever search term(s) you used to achieve the search results in question, the item summary listed on the results page for a given item would always be the same. By contrast, our new search usually shows summary text snippets that display your search terms highlighted in context.

This has the great advantage that you can see an example of how and where your search term(s) are used in the item in question before deciding whether or not to click the title and view the full item. This is especially useful with longer items, where your search term(s) may not appear in the fixed item summary but do now appear in the dynamic text snippet displayed in search results.

On the other hand, we recognise that highlighting can be an irritation where there are too many matches on a search results page, which is why we give users the option of turning highlighting off - illustrated in the screen shot below.

Please note that the context for your search term(s) in any given item may be regular paragraph text in the item body, in which case the summary text snippet will appear as all or part of a sentence. But it may be that your search term(s) appear as part of a list or in a table within the item, in which case the snippet will not make sense as a sentence and will appear as a random collection of words.

Search results page

 

Stemming

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefitsOur new search automatically applies stemming to words used in most searches, enabling it to find matches using all forms of the word(s) used in your search. So, for example, if you search for [annual hours], the search will return results using other forms of the word annual, including annualised and annualized.

If you want to bias your results in favour of items including an exact phrase, you should enclose the phrase in "double quote marks".

 

Find related articles

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefitsThere has long been an option on most article detail pages to "Find more items like this one". This is displayed in the right-hand column of the item detail page, under the heading "Related items". Clicking the link runs a search across the whole of HR & Compliance Centre to find items that match the characteristics of the selected item and lists these on a search results page. Now that these related items are found by our new search, they are much more closely matched to the selected item than was previously possible. This is because they are identified using an advanced process that both matches HR & Compliance Centre subtopics and looks for words and phrases that appear in similar contexts in other items.

 

"Did you mean?" suggestions

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefits If your search produces no results but your search term(s) are similar to words that can be found in items on HR & Compliance Centre, the new search results page may present you with a "Did you mean?" suggestion.

This feature is particularly useful where you have misspelled a word. In the example below, a user has mistakenly transposed the "r" and the "o" in the word "performance", and has been asked: "Did you mean performance management?". Simply click the suggested alternative, circled in red in the screen shot below, to run the amended search.

Please note that if you search for a phrase enclosed in "double quote marks" and one of the words is misspelled, you may be presented with a "did you mean?" alternative which, when clicked, produces no results. This means that the word in question, as amended, does exist in one or more items on HR & Compliance Centre but the full phrase cannot be found. In this respect our search works in the same way as Google and other popular search engines.

Search results page showing "Did you mean?" suggestion

 

Synonym matching

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefitsThe new search engine includes a limited synonym table, created by the Brightmine editorial team, which operates in the background to ensure that quick searches for certain words or phrases with common - and unambiguous - synonyms bring back all relevant results.

So, for example, a search for [employee handbook] will now bring back results that refer instead to [staff handbook], while a search for [hr] will also bring back articles that include [human resources].

Despite the synonym table, we strongly recommend that you continue to search as a matter of course for all variants of your search term(s), especially if your search requirements are very specific. You can do this using the "OR" operator, an example being ["industrial tribunal" OR "employment tribunal"]. This won't do any harm to the relevance of your results, even if some of your terms are included in the synonym table.

One reason for this recommendation is that some terms that you might expect to be in the synonym table are not included because of ambiguity. An example of this would be "EWC", which cannot be included because it is routinely used to mean both expected week of childbirth/confinement and European Works Council.

 

Refine by phrase

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefitsThe new search results page offers a refine by "Phrase" tab, usually displayed alongside the "Type" and "Topic" refinement tabs, which cuts down the results to match both your original search term(s) and your selected phrase.

The phrases presented under this tab are generated automatically by the search engine, which tries to discover links between items based on common words and phrases. Because they have been identified by an automated process, rather than by a human editor, these phrases vary in their usefulness. Some will provide very useful links that, when clicked, will narrow down your search results to a smaller list of more relevant items. Others will not. Users will usually be able to tell at a glance which of the phrase links will be useful.

 

Case title search

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefitsIt is now possible to search for an employment law case by its title. Simply navigate to Employment Law > Case Reports using the main HR & Compliance Centre navigation buttons on the left-hand side of all pages and click the "Case title" tab. Then enter one or more words from the case title into the search box displayed at the top of the page and click the orange "Search" button.

The case title search will search across all case titles in the HR & Compliance Centre system, so for example a search for [jones] will find all case titles that include the word "jones", whether as claimant or respondent.

It is important to note that the new case title search is different from the regular case reports search that has long been available on HR & Compliance Centre. The case title search covers case titles only, while the case reports search looks for your search term(s) in the full body text of case reports. This means that the case title search is likely to be of use only when you are looking for a specific case and you know the name of one of the parties, while the regular case reports search will deliver better results in other circumstances.

You can access the regular case reports search by navigating to Employment Law > Case Reports and then clicking the "Search" tab. Alternatively, click the "Search options" link at the top right of all pages on HR & Compliance Centre and use the advanced search form to select the information type "law reports".

Case reports - case title search box

 

Highlighting of search term(s) on item detail pages

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefits When you open an HR & Compliance Centre detail page by clicking a link on a page of search results, the word(s) and phrase(s) in the item that match your search term(s) are highlighted in yellow.

You can switch off the highlighting by clicking the "Turn highlighting off" link, which is displayed in the right-hand column of the page, under the heading "This Item". You can switch highlighting on again by clicking the same link, which will have been renamed "Turn highlighting on".

Following the release of our new search enhancements, you can now also skip straight to the first appearance of your search term(s) in the item by clicking the yellow highlighted area displayed towards the top of the item, circled in red in the screen shot below.

You can then skip forwards to the next appearance of your search term(s) in the item by clicking the highlighted word(s) or phrase(s). To skip backwards to the previous appearance of your search term(s), simply hold down the "Alt" key on your keyboard while clicking the highlighted word(s) or phrase(s).

Please note that where your search term appears in the item body as a link, clicking it will activate the link in question rather than moving through the item to the next occurrence. In other words, regular hyperlinks take precedence over the new skip-to-highlighted word(s) feature.

We recognise that the skipping feature will be more useful on some occasions than on others. It will be less useful where your search term(s) are liberally sprinkled throughout an item, in which case you may want to switch off highlighting for that item. But it will be very useful where your search term(s) appear for the first time, say, three quarters of the way through a lengthy item, in which case skipping straight to the first appearance of the search term(s) with one click will save you time and effort.

HR & Compliance Centre detail page following a search

 

Search personalisation options

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefits HR & Compliance Centre users can now personalise the advanced search form and the way that search results are presented when they are logged into the site.

To set your search personalisation options, log into the site and click the "My HR & Compliance Centre" top navigation button, which is displayed at the top of all main pages, then click the navigation tab entitled "My Searches".

Once you have selected the "My Searches" tab, you will see a section entitled "My search preferences" immediately beneath the tab. Two tick box options are provided: "Show Autonomy idea cloud" and "Allow search by journal". These are described below.

Show Autonomy idea cloud
Ticking the "Show Autonomy idea cloud" box on the "My Searches" page, followed by the "save" button, will alter the various search results pages on the site so that they display - when appropriate - a related searches box to the right of the main search results, containing phrases that our search engine has identified as being linked in some way to your search word(s).

These phrases are served automatically by the search engine, which tries to discover links between words and phrases contained in different items on the site. Some of the phrases will provide useful links to relevant related searches, while others will not. The more articles that contain a particular phrase, the bigger the size of the words in the related searches box.

Click a blue related search phrase to run a new search for items that match that phrase.

We recognise that the idea cloud is an evolving technology and the results can be somewhat hit and miss. It can also add significantly to the time it takes to load the search results page. Hence it will not suit all users and therefore we have made it a personalised search option rather than a default feature of the site.

To stop the search results pages displaying the idea cloud simply untick the "Show Autonomy idea cloud" box.

Allow search by journal
Ticking the "Allow search by journal" box on the "My Searches" page, followed by the "save" button, will alter the advanced search form, adding a new option at the bottom of the form to limit your search results to articles from a particular journal from the following list:

• European Employment Review
• European Industrial Relations Review
• IRS Employment Review

European Employment Review is the new name for the former European Industrial Relations Review, so ticking the boxes next to both of these will limit your search results to articles from the current journal and its predecessor. To stop the advanced search form displaying the option to narrow your search results by journal, simply untick the "Allow search by journal" box.

 

Boolean search options

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefitsLike the old search, our new search supports wildcards and Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT and NEAR), used by advanced searchers for precision requests. Unlike when used with the old search, Boolean operators need always to be typed in UPPER CASE to be effective.

In some cases these work rather differently from the way they worked with the old HR & Compliance Centre search engine. One example, already referred to above, relates to the "NOT" operator, which finds matches based on sections within items and hence can bring back items that do in fact include your specified "NOT" term(s) elsewhere in the item.

As before, there is no need to include "AND" between words in a search that does not include any other Boolean operators. This is because the new search, like the old one, assumes that you mean "AND" when you add more than one word - so a search for [garden leave], for example, will be automatically treated as a search for [garden AND leave].

The new search offers enhanced options for the "NEAR" operator. If you add "D" at the front (as in "DNEAR"), it will search for items that contain your search terms in the order specified. So, for example, a search for [garden DNEAR leave] will look for matches where the word leave appears after the word garden, but will ignore cases where the word leave appears before the word garden.

The default definition of "NEAR" is within five words either side. So in the example above, the search for [garden DNEAR leave] will look for matches where the word garden appears up to five words before the word leave, while the search for [garden NEAR leave] will look for matches where the words appear within five words of each other regardless of order.

The new search also allows users to specify the proximity of "NEAR" and "DNEAR" searches by adding a number in numeric format immediately at the end of the operator. Thus for example [garden DNEAR1 leave] will find matches where the word garden appears one word before the word leave, while [garden NEAR8 leave] will find matches where the words appear within eight words of each other regardless of order.

 

Subscribe to a feed

Cycle to Work schemes and their benefitsSince February it has been possible to subscribe to a feed from any HR & Compliance Centre search results page. Simply click the orange feed icon or click the link entitled "subscribe to a search feed" to subscribe to the feed using your news reader software, an online feed reader or the live bookmarks facility in your internet browser.

With a subscription to an HR & Compliance Centre search results feed, you will be notified any time that new content is added to the site that matches your search term(s).

For more information on subscribing to feeds, see our feeds page or the feeds section of our user guide.