[Sigia-l] search results and thesauri

[Michael Fry]

I'm in the early stages of building a thesaurus for the purpose of
improving search results. In thinking ahead to the search interface,
it's occurred to me that the way I'd been planning to display search
results, i.e. with the search terms shown in context (the way Google
does, for example) might occasionally be counterproductive. 

For example:

* user does a search for 'cat'
* search engine doesn't find 'cat' in its index--all the documents use
'feline'--but the thesaurus, where 'cat' and 'feline' have been
identified as synonymous, directs the engine to documents containing
'feline'
* engine displays said documents, highlighting 'feline' where it appears
in context
* user is unfamiliar with 'feline' and wonders why the results are
apparently irrelevant to his query

So I guess my question is this: any recommendations for how you'd
display the results in a scenario like this? Would you explicitly alert
users to the cat-feline relationship so they better understand and
appreciate the results? Would you simply choose not to show search terms
in context? Something else?

Thank you.
mf