Building synonym lists from spoken language, not internal jargon

Internal catalogue names are rarely the words people type. Support tickets, chat transcripts, and call summaries often hold the bridging language long before search logs do.

Collect phrases that describe the same object or task in different ways. Keep the original spelling. Correcting everything to house style too early hides the mismatch you are trying to measure.

A short workshop with content and support staff can turn that raw list into a draft synonym map. The map should mark which terms are true equivalents and which are adjacent ideas that should not collapse together.

Test the map against a recent zero-result sample. If a proposed synonym still leaves people empty-handed, the issue may be missing content rather than missing aliases.

Treat the synonym list as a living document owned by people who hear customer language weekly, not as a one-off engineering ticket.

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