Basissuch

Basissuch is a concept in information retrieval and search interface design that refers to constructing and operating a search process from a compact, foundational set of signals, or basis. The basis consists of core terms, entities, and features regarded as representative for a task or domain. From this basis, a system generates broader query terms and retrieves relevant documents through expansion, refinement, or re-ranking steps.

The typical workflow begins with creating the basis: extracting salient keywords from a corpus, user queries, or domain models; then applying expansion techniques such as synonyms, morphological variants, concept expansions, or learned representations. Expansion can be rule-based, lexicon-driven, or learned from user interactions. The basis can be updated over time through relevance feedback or interaction data.

Basissuch is used in settings where interpretability and control over search behavior are important, such as digital libraries, enterprise search, and e-commerce. It supports exploratory search by allowing researchers or users to inspect the basis and understand why results were retrieved, while enabling targeted refinements when results are incomplete.

Advantages include efficiency, transparency, and tunable coverage. Limitations include potential bias toward the basis, risk of missing relevant queries outside the basis, and dependence on high-quality basis construction and update mechanisms.

Origin and usage: The term is found in German-language information retrieval discourse as a descriptive label for basis-driven search strategies rather than a formal, universally defined methodology. See also query expansion, seed terms, relevance feedback, and exploratory search.