define Fuzzy Search

Definition:

Search which will find matching terms when terms are misspelled (or fuzzy).

A fuzzy search is a process that locates Web pages that are likely to be relevant to a search argument even when the argument does not exactly correspond to the desired information. A fuzzy search is done by means of a fuzzy matching program, which returns a list of results based on likely relevance even though search argument words and spellings may not exactly match.

A fuzzy matching program can operate like a spell checker and spelling-error corrector. For example, if a user types “syncdoche” into Yahoo or Google (both of which use fuzzy matching), a list of hits is returned along with the question, “Did you mean synecdoche?” Alternative spellings, and words that sound the same but are spelled differently, are given.