Student of Fortune has a whopping 473 categories in which to post a question. That’s pretty daunting.

What’s even more daunting, though, is searching for your question on our site and not getting the answer you were looking for. That sucks.

Ever hear the statement that an assembly is greater than the sum of its parts? Well, it’s true. Let’s say you’re searching for Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, because that’s the homework you’ve got. I don’t have any idea what Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is, but we don’t have any questions that mention it.

We used to just say the equivalent of “no results, no dice, please play again.” That’s pretty crummy though. So, through the power of microcomputing, we are now able to offer category suggestions for every search query that doesn’t return results. Searching for Chlamydomonas reinhardtii now comes up with:

Search for Questions… hmm. Nothing.

Maybe you’re asking about Plant Study, Generics and Reproductive Biology, General Biology, or something else? Post your question right now and you’ll get a great answer, super fast!

Much better. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is definitely a botany term.

How accurate is it? Let’s try some random article titles from Wikipedia:

• Thebit (crater) -> “The Solar System”
• Tuesday Warner -> “Music for Film and Theater”, “Mass Media” (”Tuesday Warner is a fictional character on the TVNZ soap opera Shortland Street”)
• Clara Fraser -> “American Policy,” “Women in History,” “Feminist Thought”

Not bad! It’s a strange technique and not easily recounted in a blog post, but perhaps we’ll cover it at BarCampLA 4.