How to create a synonym dictionary

[Tasha3]

I'm trying to create a synonym dictionary to improve our search results. I read in the documentation that "By default, the system provides a sample synonym search dictionary called Example synonym dictionary."  Our instance doesn't have this "Example" dictionary, it's just a blank slate. I see how I can click on New to create one, but I'm looking for best practices and guidance as to what to include in it since I don't have any "Examples" to review. Thank you!

[Vickie Runyon]

I don't remember if I found any documentation on how to create but attached is a screenshot of our Synonym Dictionary. Not much to it...

The blur in the name is our company name.

[Tasha3]

Great, thanks - I just wanted to see something before I attempted to create this myself. Looks like it's fairly simple other than spending some time thoughtfully figuring out synonyms.

[Vickie Runyon · Accepted solution]

I review search data on a regular basis to see what terms are most commonly searched and use that data to determine if we need additional synonym entries. Maybe you can see in the screenshot, we only have 18 entries in our synonym dictionary. We also use the 'meta' field on each article to include similar search terms for each article.

[Tasha3]

Regarding meta tags, we haven't used those, either. Our knowledge is for internal use only - we don't have a public-facing instance. I was thinking that meta tags are only for external search engines - do you know if that's correct?