How does Algolia handle typing mistakes?

Algolia uses three features to handle typing mistakes:

Typo-tolerance

Algolia provides typo tolerance out-of-the-box, along with some important ways to customize just how tolerant a search experience should be.

Typo-tolerance helps when a letter is replaced by another (“iphxne” instead of “iphone”), or when letters switched position (“iphnoe” instead of “iphone”).

By default, Algolia considers that a result without any typing mistake is more relevant, and therefore ranks it higher in the results list.

Split and concatenation

Algolia normalizes data, ensuring consistency in how it’s represented and matched. We split words when they are combined, and we combine space-separated words. This lets us detect when space or a special character is missing (“rayban” instead of “ray-ban”), or when there’s an extra space or a special character (“i-phone” or “i phone” instead of “iphone”).

Synonyms

You can define a list of synonyms to help users find the results they’re looking for, even when they don’t use the right words. This way, a search for “trousers” finds “pants”, and “pants” finds “trousers”.