Welcome to SearchStax Site Search

This guide is for new SearchStax Site Search solution customers looking to understand the steps involved to integrate Site Search into your website.

In general, the Site Search integration has four phases:

1. Create a Site Search account and Application(s)
2. Upload your data
3. Configure your App(s)
4. Create the Search UI and connect your App(s) to it

The guide outlines the steps in each phase, but it is important to recognize the details of each phase may vary to meet the specifics of your requirements.

Create a Search Application

In this phase, you are setting the groundwork to build out your search experience. The steps outlined below are fairly standard across all Site Search implementations.

Log in to your Site Search account

It’s assumed your Site Search account has been created with the appropriate amount of Apps for your implementation.

1. Log in to your account at searchstudio.searchstax.com. Navigate to the Account in the top right-hand corner. Check your plan details are correct.
2. Invite your users. Do all your team members have invites to the Site Search dashboard? Have they accepted the invite yet or have they expired?

Create a Search Application

Now we are starting the integration. The first step is to create an App. Follow the guide referenced below to create your first App.

Creating a Search App

Once your App is provisioned, make sure all of your API endpoints and tokens have been generated properly. Go to Settings and run through each tab to ensure you have working endpoints. You can even run CURL commands to ensure you have a live, working App.

App Settings

That’s it! Phase one is complete.

Upload your Data

Now begins the technical integration. If you or your team are unclear on the preferred data ingestion methods, consult Searchstax to discuss options and gain clarity.

Below are options in reference to where your data lives.

Data is on Sitecore

For customers on the Sitecore platform (excluding XM Cloud) the easiest and preferred way to upload data is with the Sitecore module. The module connects to the Indexing Pipeline, so once the integration is set, there is no state management required afterwards. Find all information about the module below.

Sitecore Module

Data is on Drupal

For customers on the Drupal platform, the preferred way to upload data is with the Drupal Search API and SearchStax modules. Use Drupal Search API along with connector modules to ingest the data. Use the SearchStax module to set configurations within Drupal to use Site Search. Find all information regarding Drupal modules below.

Set Up Drupal Module

Data is Elsewhere

If your data is on a DXP/CMS platform we do not have a connect for, behind a login, in a database, or elsewhere, you can use one of the two options below. If you are looking for options for data outside of the DXPs listed above, consult SearchStax on your options.

Web Crawler

SearchStax deploys web crawlers for customers when the connectors above do not suffice. Web crawlers can scrape the data available on any public website your organization owns. The crawlers run every 24 hours picking up any new content and removing deleted content. Consult SearchStax to learn more about how they work.

Ingest API

The Ingest API lets you send data to SearchStax Site Search directly in either JSON or XML format. In this situation, it is up to you to format the data such that the API can ingest it and push new content. Learn more about how it works below.

Ingest API

Configure your App

The third phase is relatively easy. At this point, you have created a Search App with data. Now it is time to generate a search page! The First Search guide below walks you through the entire process on how to do get your search page stood up.

Your First Search

Considerations when Configuring your App

• A Relevance Model is required to return search results. This is where Search Fields must be configured. These fields are the ones Site Search looks in for keyword matches. If it has no Search Fields to look for keyword matches, then search results will not appear.
• Once your search page is stood up, make sure to run through all the configurations available to you. It is easy to move on to the next step when you see a working search page. The value in Site Search is that you can enhance the Relevance extensively through all the features made available to you. Specifically, check all the options in Search and Recommendations sections.
• Use Search Preview to view the values of all your fields. You will often be inundated with many fields all available as Display, Facet, Sort, and Search fields. It’s best to create many Display fields initially to then use Search Preview to see the values in them. Then, you can decide what fields you need to use.

Create the UI and connect your App(s) to it

You are onto the last step! The search works in Site Search, but now you need a user-facing search page powered by your Search App. The two main options are the Hosted Search Experience or an API build. The Hosted Search Experience meets most requirements and accelerates the implementation. Sometimes, the Hosted Search App may not meet your requirements, which is why an API build will be required.

Options on Sitecore

• The Sitecore module comes with a built-in Hosted Search Experience. As part of the module set-up process, you will create a search page using the accelerator. At this point, you need to adjust the styling to complete the onboarding process! More details about styling are below.
• Build a custom search page as specified in the documentation here – Custom Search Page.
• Custom API build. For maximum control, use this option. Skip below to the details of the Custom API Build.

Options on Drupal

• Use the Drupal Views module. If you already have a Drupal View powered by a Search API index, switching to Site Search becomes easy. Once you install the SearchStax module you can redirect searches through Site Search.
• Use the Hosted Search Experience with the SearchStax Drupal module. We have developed a module to drop the Hosted Search Experience in a Twig template. If this option makes sense for you, please contact SearchStax for details.
• Custom Search UI App integration. Integrate the Vue. js-based Search UI App into your Drupal instance. We cannot advise you on this route. It is only recommended for advanced users.
• Custom API build. Use this option for maximum control. Skip below to the details of the Custom API Build.

All Other Platforms/Custom API Build Details

The API build is only recommended for customers with complex requirements. The following APIs are available.

• Search API (required) – returns search results
• Analytics API (required) – captures user behavior and populates it in the Site Search dashboard. Two options:
  • Tracking API (REST)
  • Tracking API (Javascript)
• Auto-suggest API (recommended) – displays type ahead suggestions in search bar dropdown.
• Popular Searches API (recommended) – returns popular searches as captured by analytics.
• Related Searches API (recommended) – returns searches related to the query a user just searched.

That’s it! Your Search App is integrated with your web App.

Next Steps

Now that you have integrated your search page, you can use the analytics gathered to increase content engagement and decrease content gaps. Use our No Results, Searches without Clicks, Most Popular Searches and other insights provided to understand the needs of your users.

Use the resource below to learn more about analytics:

1. Analytics documentation: Dashboard
2. Learn how to use Site Search: SearchStax Site Search Delivers Advanced, Relevant and Personalized Search Experiences.

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Overview

Site Search’s Navigation Menu groups features and tools according to a users’ role. For example, features that are frequently used by the Marketing team to optimize search are grouped under Optimizations. Similarly, tools generally used by Developers during setup are grouped together under the Configurations and App Settings menu.

Here is a one-minute overview video of the Navigation Menu.

If you have questions about this change, please contact your account manager.

Navigation Menu Details

The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Navigation Menu provides access to all Site Search Apps and features. It is typically collapsed to keep its footprint small. Click the menu bar to expand it.

All Apps

The All Apps link opens the Apps Table, which lists all Site Search Apps belonging to the current account.

Apps are also available through the Profile Selector.

Analytics Menu

The Site Search solution’s Analytics database gives direct insight into the search behavior of your website visitors.

• Dashboard: Displays summary statistics for the selected Search App.
• Searches: Summary tables of search behavior over a specified time interval.
• Content Items: Insights on the content that mattered most, least, and that did not interest the viewer.
• Custom Reports: Filter your site’s search history for insight into the queries and content items that interested your viewers.
• Search Feedback: Asking users directly about their search experience can provide actionable insights.

Optimizations Menu

The Optimizations are Site Search features you can use to tune the search experience for your visitors.

• Promotions: Promote content for seasonal events, high-impact keywords, or specific campaigns.
• Synonyms: Guide the search user to relevant content by broadening the query.
• Smart Match Assist: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and natural language processing to provide context-aware query suggestions.
• Auto-Suggest: Suggests search terms based on past user queries.
• Related Searches: Define a search phrase related to one or more potential search phrases.

Configurations – Basic

The “basic configurations” have a strong impact on the Search Experience and can be set up by a business user. Technical expertise is not required.

• Search Fields: Match user queries against a list of Search Fields.
• Results Fields: Choose which fields to return in the search results.
• Faceting: Choose which fields to use for facet generation.
• Ranking: Apply “boost” multipliers to results that meet special criteria.
• Spell Check: When a query returns no results, it automatically runs a new query using a similar word from the index.
• Stopwords: Common words to remove from queries to obtain sharper focus.

Configurations – Advanced

The advanced configurations require some technical perspective for effective use.

• Data Filters: Partition your index and focus the search on relevant material.
• Rules: Boost relevance scores based on “triggers” in the query.
• Sorting: Define the sort options offered by the current Search Profile.

Configurations – Search UI

• Hosted Search Experience: Allow coworkers to try the Search Experience without logging into Site Search.
• UI Kits: Gateway to a library of search-page widgets to add to your company website.

App Settings

These powerful tools are for the technical side of the team.

• Data Management: The SearchStax Site Search solution offers several tools for uploading your website content to the Site Search index.
  • Crawler: The Crawler indexes the pages of your website starting with a single root node.
  • Sitecore Module: Connects Sitecore directly to the SearchStax Site Search solution and lets you publish a custom search page immediately.
  • Drupal Module: Integrates Site Search with recent versions of Drupal.
  • Ingest API: Provides examples of using the Site Search /update endpoint.
• All APIs: Site Search API endpoints and credentials.
• Languages: Adding language-specific experiences to your project.

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The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Search Profile Selector lets you choose which Site Search App and which Search Profile to view and modify. Search Profiles (formerly “Relevance Models”) are customizable configurations that define a website’s search experience. They allow tailored configurations such as search fields and promotions, letting marketers fine-tune search experiences for different audiences.

The Search Profile Selector is a menu bar across the top of the Site Search screen providing consolidated access to your Site Search account’s Search Apps and Profiles, among other options:

The menu bar includes the following menus and controls:

• Viewing [Search App]: Choose the Site Search App to edit, or the +Create button to create a new one. The See All button opens a detailed table of all available Apps.
• Language Selector: If the selected App includes multi-language experiences, you can choose among them here.
• Profile Selector: Marketers can select a specific Search Profile to enhance. By default, the “Main Profile” is at the top of the list. Use the +Create button to create a new profile. The Show All button opens a detailed table of available profiles.
• Preview ▸: This link opens the Search Preview screen, a fully functional display of this App’s search behavior using the selected Search Profile.

The following menus are not strictly part of the Search Profile Selector but are found in close proximity to it:

• Support menu: This menu links to Documentation, Blogs, and the Searchstax Support Desk.
• Account menu: This contains account-level options for setting user profile values, managing users, tracking billing, changing accounts, and logging out.

For Enterprise accounts, some controls and menu items are restricted to Site Search users in specific roles.

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The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Search Apps Table lets you choose which Site Search App to edit in the Site Search interface. An App is a full Site Search project, including a Solr index and all components contributing to the search experience. Subject to contractual limits, one Site Search account can have multiple Apps.

Access to the Apps Table

This is the first screen a new Site Search user will see, displaying the Create App button immediately. To call up this table at any subsequent time, click the All Apps link in the Navigation Menu.

Columns

The Apps Table is an interactive list of the Apps belonging to your account. Each entry displays four fields:

• App Name: Each App has a unique name within your account.
• Environment: A label to help you track the mission of each App in a software development process.
  • Development
  • Production
  • QA
  • Staging
  • UAT
• Platform: Indicates whether the project is based on Sitecore, Drupal, or is a Custom application.
• Region: The cloud region where the App is hosted.

Actions

From this table you can:

• Create a new App (if you have appropriate permissions). Note the Create a New App button in the upper right corner of the screen.
• Select an App (by clicking it) to load its information into the Site Search environment.
• Edit some aspects of an App. Click the edit (pencil) icon.
• Delete an App (if you have appropriate permissions). By setting multiple checkboxes, you can delete multiple Apps simultaneously.

Some controls and menu items are restricted to Site Search users in specific roles.

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Site Search > Profile Selector

The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Search Profiles are named collections of search-related settings that let you switch among multiple search experiences for your website. A profile includes the following search parameters applied as a set:

• Promotions
• Search Fields
• Ranking
• Data Filters
• Rules

Changes to these parameters are automatically included in the currently selected profile when you “publish” the change.

You may select a profile for editing in the Search Profile Selector.

The +Create button launches a Create Search Profile dialog. You must enter a unique name for the profile. The See All button exposes the Search Profiles table (see below).

The Search Profiles screen displays a list of current profiles. You may open a profile by clicking it, or click the Create Profile button for a new one.  

Creating a profile takes you to the Search Fields screen. A profile must have at least one search field defined before most other features can become active.

The default profile is the one that the Search Preview page opens to. Only one profile can be the default.  

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Site Search > Profile Selector > Preview

The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Preview screen lets you see how your published configurations and Search Profiles perform against your search index. This is a fully-functional search environment except that you cannot “click through” the result items to view the remote pages.

Use the Search Profile Selector (at the top of the screen) to choose a profile for testing. Then click the Preview button.

Type a query into the search field and click the magnifying glass icon. 

After the initial search, you can see the number of results, the list of results and their field values, and the facet lists. 

The exciting thing is to then switch to a different Search Profile and perform the same search. Did you get the same results, or did one of the models work better than the other?

Taking it up a level, you can return to the Basic Configuration and Advanced Configuration interfaces and change the search behavior. Publish the changes and return here to the Preview page. Repeat the searches and see the changes you made applied in real time!  

That’s the payoff of Site Search. Tweak the search experience and try it out without writing a scrap of code. 

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Site Search > Analytics > Dashboard > Checkbox Icon

The SearchStax Site Search solution includes a To-Do list of tasks for users who are just getting started with their project. Open the navigation menu to the Analytics Dashboard and click the checkbox icon. (The list will open automatically until you complete three of the tasks. After that, you’ll have to open it manually to continue.)

The Task List consists of five milestones vital to a Site Search project. Each task has a button that leads to the screen where it can be accomplished.

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This is a procedure for completing your first search with the SearchStax Site Search solution:

Confirm that data has been loaded. Navigate to Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations > Results Fields. Click on the Return Field dropdown. Make sure the list is populated with your fields.

You can map fields in your index to predefined fields in the Results Card. An example is automatically shown on the right of the screen. A mapping is not required to display the fields in the results.

We suggest creating a Title, Description, and URL field. Through trial and error, you will determine the most relevant fields to return to the user. Once you have done this, click Save Draft and then Publish.

Create a Search Profile. A profile is required to run a search and determines what index fields and rules are used for optimal search results. Navigate to Site Search > Profile Selector > Profiles Menu and click Create+.

On the Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations > Search Fields screen, select the fields that queries will match. Typically, these are consumer-facing fields such as “Page_title”, “Heading_1”, “Description”, etc. When you are done, click Save Draft and then Publish.

Once the Search Fields are active, you can optionally Rank those fields and add Data Filters, Rules, and Promotions. 

Test your Search Profile settings on the Preview page. This is Site Search’s internal testing page. Customize the Preview by selecting the View Style, Sort By and Results Per Page.

Once you receive results in Preview, you can Add Facets from Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configuration > Faceting to get search results that meet your business requirements.

Share your Search Page by enabling a Site Search > Configurations > Search UI > Hosted Search Experience. This lets you share a search page with people who cannot log into Site Search. Changes in Site Search settings are reflected immediately in the Hosted Search Experience.

Gain Insights with Search Analytics using Search Feedback, the Dashboard, Searches, Content Items, and Custom Reports. These features require user search activity to accumulate before they become operational.

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