Unlocking the Power of Sitecore Search
Evolution
Amar Chokhawala founded Reflektion who was a pioneering member of the Google AdSense team, he was instrumental in conceiving and implementing core technologies that are integral to its widespread adoption today. Furthermore, Amar made significant contributions to Gmail user modeling, leveraging semantic learning and advanced technologies to enhance search results and other applications that let him to establish Reflektion in 2012 and subsequently acquired by Sitecore in 2021, undergoing a rebranding as Sitecore Discover. Following this acquisition and rebranding, Sitecore Search was launched in 2022.
Difference
Sitecore Discover
Commerce search with Powerful AI-driven product search and merchandizing solution, enables businesses to deliver personalized commerce experiences.
e.g: https://www.biglots.com
Sitecore Search
Content search targeted for marketing websites. Predict search intent and display individualized results with a next-gen content discovery solution.
e.g: https://www.sitecore.com/search
What is Sitecore Search?
Sitecore Search is a powerful and versatile search product, that allows organizations to implement search capabilities on their websites and digital properties, enabling users to quickly find relevant content or information. The three main components of Sitecore Search are as follows.
Customer Engagement Console (CEC)
Your one-stop shop for search analytics, tests, configuration, and more. The Sitecore search cloud portal that is used to configure search.
Search & recommendations service
An AI-based REST API for performing search queries and receiving results.
Event service
A REST API for collecting visitor interactions which are key to optimizing the search experience.
Platform Capablities
Unified Index
Different sources are crawled and stored in an unified index that allows for faster and more efficient searching that eliminates the need to querying multiple indexes.
Multi locale
Integrate several languages into your search for streamlined management and global relevance.
Personalization
Personalize with ease by considering visitor behavior and presenting the right content tailored to their needs. Displays search results based on a user's search history and behavior on the website.
Split Testing
Conduct multivariate tests A/B and leverage variations to identify the most effective content for each audience segment.
Context and Rules engine
Rules engine is used to Boost/Bury/Blacklist results with the site or user context, which improves and helps with better user experience.
Privacy Compliance
Support for CCPA and GDPR Deletion requests at the platform level.
Multi region hosting
Support hosting in multiple regions for better performance also to support privacy compliance for certain regions.
Features
Suggestions
Provides suggested search queries based on user input on the search input.
Preview suggestions
Deliver quick, predictive search results by suggesting relevant keywords as users type, exceeding their needs within milliseconds.
Match Highlighting
Highlighting emphasizes the search term(s) in the results.
Search Ranking
Boost certain certain results to appear higher in the search result, by boosting the results or burrying the results.
Synonyms
Enhance search precision and user experience by linking related terms. Either by one way, Two way synonym or replacement.
Sorting
Allows users to narrow search results based on specific criteria.
Facet and Filtering
Allows users to narrow search results based on specific criteria.
Content Recommendations
Personalize the web journey with instant searches, activating a range of tailored page content in real-time.
Textual Relevance
Improve the relevance by giving priority to attributes of a search result.
Measuring Search Performance
- Key performance indicators (KPIs) for evaluating search effectiveness
- Leveraging Analytics to monitor user search behavior
- Using data insights to make data-driven improvements
- Top keywords and no results to identify the Content Gap
Ref:
https://www.sitecore.com/products/search
https://developers.sitecore.com/search
https://developers.sitecorecloud.io/search-sdk/react/latest/storybook/index.html
https://doc.sitecore.com/search/en/developers/search-and-recommentation-api/index.html
Credit:
Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash