What is Query Relaxation?
Query relaxation is a controlled process that widens constraints—e.g., remove quotes, drop a rare term, ease a facet, or allow fuzziness—when the exact query cannot return enough results.
How It Works (quick)
- Trigger: Low/zero results after hard filters.
- Steps (progressive): phrase → bag-of-words → allow fuzziness → drop least-informative term → relax a facet.
- Visibility: Show applied relaxations as removable chips; keep “search instead for” link.
- Guardrails: Never relax brand/SKU/price constraints without explicit user action.
Why It Matters in E-commerce
- Rescues long-tail and typo-prone searches.
- Prevents dead ends while preserving user trust.
Best Practices
- Define a playbook per category; measure impact.
- Apply a single change per step; stop as soon as k results found.
- Log relaxations; review for synonym or content gaps.
Summary
Relax just enough to be helpful—clearly, reversibly, and under strict guardrails.
