# Different results based on the ordering of the search terms

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [October 28, 2016, 1:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286 "2016-10-28T13:17:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nulpunkt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nulpunkt/32/12236_2.png) [@nulpunkt](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nulpunkt)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 1:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286/1 "2016-10-28T13:17:47Z")

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Hi All!

I'm facing a problem where ElasticSearch return different results for different orderings in the query. I have a document with the keyword "newkeyword" present, if I search for "newkeyword stnahoeu" it does not find the document, however "stnahoeu newkeyword" does yield the expected results. You can see the actual queries here:

nomatchlast-pretty.json: [https://gist.github.com/nulpunkt/ab928ae0f28e86662e8819e70cc96334](https://gist.github.com/nulpunkt/ab928ae0f28e86662e8819e70cc96334)  
nomatchfirst-pretty.json: [https://gist.github.com/nulpunkt/3dd19b8c187efbc962ee3f0eef5b491d](https://gist.github.com/nulpunkt/3dd19b8c187efbc962ee3f0eef5b491d)

These are the specific results I'm getting:

`curl localhost:9200/skyfish/document/_search -d@/tmp/nomatchlast-pretty.json`  
`{"took":11,"timed_out":false,"_shards":{"total":8,"successful":8,"failed":0},"hits":{"total":0,"max_score":null,"hits":[]}}`

`curl localhost:9200/skyfish/document/_search -d@/tmp/nomatchfirst-pretty.json`  
`{"took":10,"timed_out":false,"_shards":{"total":8,"successful":8,"failed":0},"hits":{"total":1,"max_score":null,"hits":[{"_index":"skyfish-v0","_type":"document","_id":"15818820gid576878","_score":null,"_timestamp":1477656482706,"_source":{"id":"15818820gid576878","media_id":16188086,"unique_media_id":15818820,"group_id":576878,"duration":null,"orientation":"vertical","resolution":"other","width":0,"height":0,"copyright":"","byline":"","company_id":210144,"dimension":"X","status":"released","created":"2016-10-28T11:40:32Z","camera_created":null,"media_type":2,"bucket_id":9,"filename":"3.txt","title":null,"keywords":["font","tattoo","vector","numbers","handwritten","alphabet","type","text","set","ink","read","symbol","elements","character","graphic","black","abc","pack","collection","design","letters","art","style","old school","capital","cartoon","hipster","stone","newkeyword"],"uploaded_by":"Jesper Skyfish","file_mimetype":"text\/plain; charset=us-ascii","file_disksize":12},"sort":["3.txt",15818820]}]}}`

Does anyone have a clue as to what I'm doing wrong?

I should note this is a single node test cluster, so all shards are available on the node I'm searching on.

Regardning versions:  
`curl localhost:9200 { "name" : "Test Cluster", "cluster_name" : "trumanelastic", "version" : { "number" : "2.2.0", "build_hash" : "8ff36d139e16f8720f2947ef62c8167a888992fe", "build_timestamp" : "2016-01-27T13:32:39Z", "build_snapshot" : false, "lucene_version" : "5.4.1" }, "tagline" : "You Know, for Search" }`

Best Regards.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xavierfacq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/xavierfacq/32/8744_2.png) [@xavierfacq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/xavierfacq)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 1:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286/2 "2016-10-28T13:53:54Z")

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Hi,

What is the field containing "newkeyword" ? Be aware of queries like : "match\_phrase\_prefix" it may be your problem.

You should also considere MultiMatchQueries in order to simplify your queries 😉  
[https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-multi-match-query.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-multi-match-query.html)

Bye,  
Xavier

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nulpunkt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nulpunkt/32/12236_2.png) [@nulpunkt](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nulpunkt)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 1:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286/3 "2016-10-28T13:59:12Z")

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Hi,

It is the field "keywords", which is a list of strings, so the match\_phrase\_prefix should not be a problem.

Yes, we should totally use MultiMatchQueries 😄

Best Regards.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xavierfacq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/xavierfacq/32/8744_2.png) [@xavierfacq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/xavierfacq)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 2:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286/4 "2016-10-28T14:06:56Z")

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I'm not sure you can set an array as query in a match query :

```
"match":{  
    "keywords":{  
        "operator":"and",
        "query":[  
            "stnahoeu",
            "newkeyword"
        ]
    }
}

```

should be :

```
"match":{  
    "keywords":{  
        "operator":"and",
        "query": "stnahoeu newkeyword"
    }
}

```

no ?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nulpunkt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nulpunkt/32/12236_2.png) [@nulpunkt](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nulpunkt)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 6:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286/5 "2016-11-07T06:52:02Z")

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That seems to solve the problem, thank you very much! 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xavierfacq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/xavierfacq/32/8744_2.png) [@xavierfacq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/xavierfacq)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 10:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286/6 "2016-11-07T10:23:20Z")

</div>

> [@nulpunkt](#):
>
> That seems to solve the problem

Good ! So you can mark this post as resolved 😉

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/different-results-based-on-the-ordering-of-the-search-terms/64286/7 "2017-07-05T22:06:15Z")

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