Stemming is a feature that shows you more search results that might be relevant to you. For example, if you search for “print”, it also finds documents containing “prints”, “printer”, “printed”, “printers”, or “printing”. 

Of course, you might just want pages containing the exact word “Print”, in which case you can simply uncheck the Stemming checkbox! 

Some supermarket websites include this feature. When you search for “apples” they often show you pages for apple juice, apple cider, apple cake, and apple pies before you get to the page where you can buy a bag of apples 🤦

eSearch Pro – Desktop Search includes stemming for 30 languages, which can significantly enhance search recall across diverse datasets.

Technically, stemming improves search recall, meaning it will return more search results that might be relevant to you. 

Another way of improving search recall is by using synonyms.