Site Search > Optimizations > Overview

The SearchStax Site Search solution improves the search experience by helping users to find the right content.

• 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.

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Site Search > Optimizations > Promotions

Promotions in the SearchStax Site Search Solution help you feature key content at the top of search results. Use them to promote content for seasonal events, high-impact keywords, or specific campaigns.

How it Works

A promotion is triggered by a keyword or phrase that matches elements of the incoming query. The promoted item appears at the top of the search results list.

• An indexed promotion is a document from the local website index.
• An external promotion can be any webpage, identified by its URL.

Promotion Perspective

See the following related pages for case studies and technical perspectives about promotions:

• Curate Your Site Search Experience for an example of an indexed promotion.
• Improve the Search Experience with External Promotions for a similar example of an external promotion.
• Promotions: Indexed vs. External for a technical perspective on appropriate usage.

Creating Simple Promotions

The Promotions screen lets you “promote” an item to the top of the search results list. Multiple results can be promoted, and their order can be defined. 

1. Open the Promotions Screen
   • Navigate to Site Search > Optimizations > Promotions
   • Click the Create New Promotion button.
2. Define Triggers
   • Add trigger phrases:
     • (Multiple triggers are ORd. Any of them can trigger the promotion.)
     • The Plus (+) button lets you add another trigger.
   • Set Matching Options:
     • Exact Match: Search query must exactly match the trigger.
     • Contains Match: Search query must contain the words from the trigger, but other words are allowed. Note: Matches whole words only, not substrings or regex patterns.
3. Select Promoted Items:
   1. Under Promotion Definition, select the Indexed Items tab.
   2. Enter a keyword or phrase in the “Default” search field to get matching results. (The “Advanced” search is described below on this page.)
   3. Matching result-items are displayed in the left column. Click up to ten items to select them for this promotion.
   4. Selected items appear in the right column. You can change the order of the selected items by using the Move Up and Move Down buttons.
4. Publish the Promotion: Click the Publish button at the bottom of the screen.

Advanced Search

Advanced Search helps when dealing with large indexes by targeting specific items directly.

Advanced Search uses Solr’s field:value syntax, such as url:“https://demo.searchstax.com/docs/backups/”. In the example below, we used the Advanced Search to locate that specific document and then add it to the promotion.

Other examples of advanced searches:

• id:”ed55498c-1f34-395d-963f-c79e1679ffee”
• url:”https://demo.searchstax.com/docs/searchstax-cloud-solr-backups/”
• year_published:2022

Using External Promotions

External promotions allow you to highlight content from outside your indexed data, such as events, partner pages, or advertisements.

1. Create an External Item:
   1. Open the External Items tab under Promotions.
   2. Click Create and enter:
      • Title
      • Description (optional)
      • URL. (Note that a URL may be used in only one promotion.)
2. Add the External Item to Results:
   1. Click the external item to move it to the Results List.
   2. Publish your changes to activate the external promotion.

Publishing Promotions

Promotions have two states:

• Draft: Click the Save Draft button before you leave or refresh a page. Otherwise, changes can be lost.
• Publish: The Publish button saves changes and makes the promotion active in the search experience.

The Promotions Tab lists all of the saved promotions. The orange status dots indicate draft promotions, and the green dots are published promotions.

The Publish button below this table converts all draft promotions to active published status.

Best Practices for Managing Promotions

• Use Descriptive Titles: Help organize and manage multiple promotions.
• Review Periodically: Keep promotions relevant by updating or disabling them as needed.

• Leverage Advanced Search: For large indexes, use precise field queries to quickly find the right content.

Troubleshooting Promotions

If you have any difficulty with Promotions, see Troubleshooting Promotions in the SearchStax Help Center.

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Site Search > Optimizations > Synonyms

Synonyms let the Marketer steer queries to pages containing related vocabulary.

How it Works

How the synonym feature works:

• The business user enters a synonym pair, consisting of a trigger phrase and a synonym phrase.
• When a query contains the trigger phrase, Site Search automatically inserts the synonym into the query string.

Key Benefits

• Synonyms transparently guide the search user to relevant content by broadening the query.

Setting up Synonyms

Synonyms can be set up manually, and can also be uploaded from TXT files.

Manual Entry

To enter a synonym pair manually:

1. Enter a trigger word/phrase in the Word field.
   • When this phrase appears in a query, it triggers a synonym expansion.
   • Solr synonyms must be literal strings. They do not support any kind of regex or wildcard operations.
2. Select a right-arrow (→) or a double-arrow () in the Is droplist.
   • a right-arrow (→) will replace the word on the left at query time and index time to the word on the right
   • a double-arrow () will expand the words at index and query time
3. Enter the synonym phrase in the Synonym to field.
   • This phrase will be inserted in the query string to broaden the search results. If you would like to enter multiple terms, separate them by commas.
4. Click the plus button (+) to add the synonym pair to the list of synonyms.
5. Click the Publish button to make the change active and persistent.
   • Both the Draft and Publish buttons save your changes. Publish makes the changes visible in the Search Experience.

Upload a File

Site Search lets you upload a dictionary of synonym pairs.

1. Prepare the upload file as described in Synonyms: Upload Format.
   • When you upload a file, it appends words to the previous list. 
   • Duplicate entries are ignored.
   • Maximum file size is 10MB.
   • Site Search can accommodate up to 25000 synonym entries.
2. Use the Choose File button to select the file.
3. Click Upload.
   • The new synonyms will appear in the list.

Table Utilities

The table of synonym pairs offers some convenient features:

1. At the left are controls to select one or more synonym pairs for global operations (such as delete).
2. Click on a column heading to re-sort the table by the values in that column.
3. On the right are controls to:
   • Filter the list by searching for a keyword.
   • Download the synonyms to a CSV file.
   • Delete selected synonyms.

Examples

Some synonyms are one-way, while others are symmetrical. For the example below, when the user types in “William,” Site Search will replace the term with “Bill” at index and query time.

When the user types in either “lose” or “loose”, search for both. 

Best Practices and Tips

• Examine the list of No Results Searches for inspiration about synonyms. While some words will be good candidates for Synonyms, misspellings are better suited for adding to the Spell Check dictionary.

Troubleshooting and Common Issues

• When you upload a synonym file but no new synonyms appear in the list, check the file format. The upload can fail silently.
• When you enter or upload synonyms and can’t find them later, be sure to Publish your changes.
• Be sure to regenerate your Hosted Search Experience after making any changes.

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Site Search > Optimizations > Smart Match Assist

The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Smart Match Assist leverages your users’ search behavior to map “no results” queries into similar successful queries (based on click-through events).

How it Works

• Offline AI-Powered Analysis: Smart Match Assist operates behind the scenes, continuously analyzing search data to identify queries that result in no matches.
• Historical Data Utilization: Drawing from our robust Site Search analytics, Smart Match Assist identifies alternative queries that have historically led to successful searches and clicks.
• Intelligent Suggestions for Marketers: The AI then generates a list of suggested replacement queries for each no-result search, each one guaranteed to produce results based on past user behavior.
• Marketer-Driven Optimization: These suggestions are presented in an intuitive interface, allowing marketers to review, select and implement the most appropriate query replacements.

Getting Started

Smart Match Assist is available under Recommendations in Site Search’s left-side navigation pane.

Recommendations

The Recommendations Tab of the Smart Match Assist screen presents a list of AI-Generated Recommendations for review.

The columns of this list are:

• No Results Query: A query posed within the last 30 days that returned zero results.
• Recommendation: The alternative query that the system suggests to replace the original No-Results Query. Includes the percentage of searches that had at least one click-through event.
• Reason: The basis of the recommendation, such as being a semantically Similar Term or a probable Misspelling.
• Action: This column contains the Accept/Dismiss action buttons.

Smart Match Assist suggests replacing the first query with the second one before launching the search. The suggestion must be approved (and published) by a Site Search user before it can become active.

Activity Log

When a suggestion is accepted or dismissed by the Site Search user, it disappears from the Recommendations list and appears on the Activity Log.

Note that each entry has an Undo button at the far right. This button sends the recommendation back to the Recommendations tab.

Changes are not persistent in the search experience until they are published.

Troubleshooting Tips and Common Issues

Insights into using Smart Match Assist skillfully.

• No Smart Match Assist Recommendations generated.
  • Insufficient Search History: The Smart Match Assist feature requires a minimum amount of search data to generate recommendations. For new or low-traffic sites, consider checking back in 30 days after accumulating more search activity.
  • Limited No-Result Queries or Successful Historical Queries: If there are few no-result queries or successful queries with high click-through rates, Smart Match Assist may not have enough data for accurate pairing. Increase the volume of relevant search data to improve results.
• Smart Match Assist search count and click-through-rates do not match Analytics.
  • Query Normalization Process: Smart Match Assist uses query normalization on historical searches to enhance recommendation accuracy. This means search counts and click-through rates in Smart Match Assist may differ slightly from the raw Analytics data to provide a more holistic view.
    
    Example: If the Analytics dashboard records both “solr” and “Solr” with different click-through rates, Smart Match Assist might combine these into a single normalized query (“solr”) with aggregated search count and click-through rate data.
    
    solr: search count = 10; CTR = 50%
    Solr: search count = 10; CTR = 10%
    
    Smart Match Assist will normalize these two queries and recommend a single no result query:
    
    solr: search count = 10 (10 + 10); CTR = 30% (5 clicks from solr + 1 click from Solr = 6 clicks / 20 total searches)
• A No-Result Query unexpectedly produces results.
  • A query can produce differing results under different Relevance Models. Smart Match Assist aggregates analytics data across all Relevance Models to produce recommendations.
• Recommendation is not expected.
  • AI-Generated Suggestions: Smart Match Assist recommendations are generated using AI based on user behavior, which may lead to suggestions that are not immediately intuitive. Regular review and feedback on these recommendations will refine their accuracy and relevance over time.

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Site Search > Optimizations > Auto-Suggest

The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Auto-Suggest feature helps website visitors by suggesting search terms based on an index of past user search queries.

How it Works

• Indexes Previous Queries: Auto-Suggest maintain an index of queries from previous website visitors to find:
  • Leading-character matches that could complete the visitor’s input. In the example above, the system suggests queries that began with “sit.”
  • The system also performs a fuzzy-match comparison between the input and previous query keywords, testing whether the new input might be misspelled. In the example, the system has found a keyword that contains “s”, “i”, and “t”, although not in the order typed by the visitor.
• Real-time suggestions: The system responds to user keystrokes in real time. This helps users discover relevant content faster.

Key Benefits

• Selecting a query helps users find pertinent keywords and avoid typos/misspellings.

Setting up Auto-Suggest

To set up Auto-Suggest, follow this procedure:

1. Navigate to Site Search > Optimizations > Auto-Suggest.
   
2. Select the Enable Auto-Suggest checkbox.
   
3. The Suggestion Method droplist offers two mechanisms: data and dictionary. Data allows suggestions to be based on user search behavior. Dictionary uses the list of words on this page.
4. The Display Suggestions per Search control lets you set the number of suggestions.
5. The Display Suggestions After Characters control sets the minimum number of characters a visitor must type before suggestions begin to appear.

Add a Suggestion

The Add Word field lets you manually enter suggestions one by one. Type in the word or phrase and click the (+) button.

Click the Save Draft button before you leave or refresh a page. Otherwise, changes can be lost. The Publish button makes the changes visible to end users.

Upload Suggestions

You can upload a file of suggestions in .TXT format.

• Put one suggestion on each line.
• Duplicate suggestions are ignored.
• Maximum file size is 10 MB.
• Site Search can accommodate 35,000 added suggestions (in addition to the historical search strings from analytics).

Click the Save Draft button before you leave or refresh a page. Otherwise, changes can be lost. The Publish button makes the changes visible to end users.

Suggestions List

The table at the bottom of the screen displays the suggestions that you have entered manually or by uploading a file. It does not display the suggestions derived from historical analytics data.

1. At the left are checkboxes where you can select one or more suggestions for global operations (such as delete).
2. Click on a column heading to re-sort the table by the values in that column.
3. On the right are controls to:
   • Filter the list by searching for a keyword.
   • Download the suggestions to a TXT file. The download contains only the suggestions entered/uploaded manually, not those derived from analytics data.
   • Delete selected synonyms.

Troubleshooting

If you have issues with this feature, see Auto-Suggest Issues in the SearchStax Help Center.

Questions?

Do not hesitate to contact the SearchStax Support Desk.

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Site Search > Optimizations > Related Searches

The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Related Searches feature lets us define a search phrase (such as “Sitecore”) as being related to one or more other potential search phrases.

Site Search also augments the list of Related Searches from user queries using Artificial Intelligence. This feature becomes more robust after accumulating a significant amount of search history.

How It Works

On the Preview page, following a search, related search phrases are offered to the user at the bottom of the list of results (default position). If the user clicks one of the phrases, it becomes the focus of the next search.

Key Benefits

This feature responds to users who posed a successful query and then scrolled down the results list to the bottom without clicking through.

• Site Search prompts users with related search phrases to draw them into another search before they can leave your website.
• The related searches let you provide examples of site terminology, similar products, and other information to make your search more productive.

Setting Up Related Searches

To set up Related Searches, use the left-side navigation menu to find Site Search > Optimizations > Related Searches.

• Note the checkbox in the upper left that enables or disables the entire list of Related Searches.
• Enter the triggering query (or phrase) into the Word field.
• The related search phrases may be entered as a comma-separated list in the Related To field.
• Click the (+) button to add the new entry to the list of Related Searches.
• Publish the list to make the changes active in the current Site Search App.

Delete a Related Search

• Use the checkboxes to select an entry in the list of related searches.
• Use the trashcan icon to delete the checked items.

Download/Upload a List of Related Searches

You can download the Related Searches as a .TXT file using the download button ().

You can upload Related Searches (as .TXT) using the same format.

• The primary search is followed by => and a comma-separated list of secondary searches.

• Each search may have up to ten related searches. If you try to add more, the system will ignore them.

• Note the Search feature, which lets you filter the list.

Remember that the Save Draft button persists your changes, and the Publish button makes them visible to search users.

Troubleshooting and Common Issues

• When you upload a file of related searches but they don’t persist in the list, check the file format. The upload can fail silently.
• When you enter or upload related searches and can’t find them later, be sure to Publish your changes.
• Be sure to regenerate your Search UI App after making any changes to the Search Experience.

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