High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Tabu search is a mathematical optimization method, belonging to the class of local search techniques. Tabu search enhances the performance of a local search method by using memory structures: once a potential solution has been determined, it is marked as "taboo" ("tabu" being a different spelling of the same word) so that the algorithm does not visit that possibility repeatedly. Tabu search is attributed to Fred W. Glover. Tabu search is a metaheuristic algorithm that can be used for solving combinatorial optimization problems, such as the traveling salesman problem (TSP). Tabu search uses a local or neighbourhood search procedure to iteratively move from a solution x to a solution x' in the neighbourhood of x, until some stopping criterion has been satisfied. To explore regions of the search space that would be left unexplored by the local search procedure (see local optimality), tabu search modifies the neighbourhood structure of each solution as the search progresses. The solutions admitted to N * (x), the new neighbourhood, are determined through the use of memory structures.