Today we are announcing the general availability of synonyms. Synonyms allow Azure Search to associate equivalent terms that implicitly expand the scope of a query, without the user having to provide the alternate terms.
A good example of this capability was demonstrated at the recent Microsoft Build conference, where we showed how NBA.com searches their vast photo library of players, owners, and celebrities. In this application Azure Search synonyms are used to enable nicknames of Lebron James such as “The King” or “King James” to be returned regardless of which of the three terms are used in the query.
Read about it in the Azure blog.