Remove Unwanted Auto‑Suggest Terms

Updated

Auto‑Suggest uses its own index. Removing words from a dictionary file doesn’t immediately remove those terms from suggestions. You can find and delete unwanted suggestion entries yourself using SearchStax APIs, without contacting Support.

Understand How Auto‑Suggest Stores Terms

Auto‑Suggest suggestions are served from a separate suggester collection for your App. You can see your Auto‑Suggest endpoint under App settings > All APIs > Search & Indexing. The underlying collection appears in the endpoint immediately before /emsuggest (for example, .../ss123456-APPNAME-suggester-1/emsuggest).

Tip: Because suggestions are based on an index of past user queries, a term can reappear later if new activity re‑introduces it. Plan to monitor after removal.

Step 1: Locate the Bad Term in the Suggester Index

  1. Copy your Auto‑Suggest endpoint from All APIs.
  2. Derive the suggester collection base URL by removing the trailing /emsuggest. Example pattern: https://searchcloud-1-us-east-1.searchstax.com/29847/demo-1234_suggester.

  3. Query the suggester collection with /select to find the entry and get its id. Replace with part of the misspelled term. The field name may vary by language (for example, studio_suggest_en): 

     curl --location '<SUGGESTER_BASE_URL>/select?q=studio_suggest_en:*<PREFIX>*&wt=json&indent=true' \
  --header 'Authorization: Token <READ-ONLY TOKEN>'

To review multiple suggestions at once, run several prefix queries (for example, fi, then fin, then finan) or request more rows and page through the results. The goal is to collect the id values for every unwanted term you plan to delete. 

 curl --location '<SUGGESTER_BASE_URL>/select?q=*:*&wt=json&indent=true&rows=10' \
  --header 'Authorization: Token <READ-ONLY TOKEN>'

Search the resulting JSON for your unwanted terms and note the ids of those documents.

Step 2: Delete the Entry by Id with the Update API

Use the suggester collection’s /update endpoint to delete by id: 

 curl --location '<SUGGESTER_BASE_URL>/update' \
  --header 'Authorization: Token <READ-WRITE TOKEN>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "delete": { "query": "id:<DOCUMENT_ID>" }
  }'

Verification:

  • Wait 5–10 minutes for the change to commit.
  • Re‑run the /select query from Step 1 to confirm the document is gone.
  • Call your /emsuggest endpoint with the same prefix and confirm the bad term no longer appears.

Note: The suggester index also rebuilds on a daily schedule. After removing the term, check again the next day to ensure it doesn’t return in live suggestions.

If the term still appears immediately after delete, wait 5–10 minutes for the commit window to elapse, then click Reload Schema in All APIs > Search & Indexing. Test again in Preview.

If the term reappears the next day, keep in mind that the suggester index rebuilds daily. If your source dictionary or job re‑adds the term, it will return. Remove or correct the source, then repeat the delete.

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