# MEMEX - Failure Modes in Search

# Failure Modes in Search

Searches fail either due to incorrect prioritization of search results, failure to identify keywords in search results (especially for n-gram based approaches), or an insufficient document pool to provide relevant search results.
Prioritization failures are indicated when there are an abundance of search results, but a poor match with the search terms.
Keyword failures can be distinguished from pool limitations by investigating whether the n-gram is present in the dictionary.

## Topics

/topic/astrolabe.gmi