If you want certain words—such as "the", "what", "that", or "it" to be treated as regular searchable terms (instead of being ignored as stop words), you can update your Words Ignored dictionary in the Algolia Dashboard.
Steps to allow specific stop words
In the Algolia Dashboard, select your Search product.
In the left-hand menu, go to Dictionaries.
In the top-right corner, select the language used by your index.
Open the Words Ignored dictionary.
Search for the word you want to allow (e.g.
"the").
Then, depending on the word's origin:
If it is an Algolia-provided stop word, click Disable to stop Algolia from removing it from queries.
If it is a custom stop word you previously added, you can either Disable it or Remove it entirely.
Click Review and Save to apply your changes.
Once disabled or removed, the word will be treated like any other searchable term—as long as stop word removal (removeStopWords) is still active for that language.
Optional: Disable stop word removal entirely
If you don’t want any stop words removed from queries, you can disable the feature completely by setting the removeStopWords parameter to false for your index.
NeuralSearch compatibility
Please note: Custom stop word dictionaries are not currently supported with NeuralSearch. If you're using NeuralSearch, modifications made through custom dictionaries will not be applied.