Presentation from Sitecore Conference SugCon in Malaga, March 2023

1. Sitecore Search:
A Real PoC
Jesper Balle & Sebastian Winslow
#sugcon

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Sebastian Winslow
CTO (DK)
Sitecore MVP 2009-2023
sebastian.winslow@valtech.com
Jesper Balle
Tech lead & Solution architect
jesper.balle@valtech.com
Presented by Valtech

3. Sitecore Search
An introductoin

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A bit of history

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• SaaS
• Based on experience from Discover
• Many configuration options through UI
• Role-based interface
• Reporting
• Rich feature set
• Predictive and AI
A new boy in town

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• Crawling
§ Content is actually on the page
§ What content to index
§ How to update (1 page multiple items)
• Item based
§ Easily integrated in content creation
§ Which fields to index
§ What constitutes the page
”Sitecore” indexing approaches
• Feeds
§ Easy to control and keep overview of
content being indexed
§ Address potential JS issues
• API push
§ What constitutes the page
§ Mass or incremental updates

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• Customer Engagement Console
§ Site performance
§ Pages (that uses widgets)
§ Widgets
§ Analytics
§ Global Resources
§ Catalog
§ Developer Resources
§ Administration
CEC – your friend to be

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• KPIs
§ Visits
§ Page views
§ Requests
§ Widget performance
§ Conversion rates
• Filters
§ Time
§ Devices
§ App type
• Web, native…
Site performance

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• An overview of search powered pages
• Where are widgets used
• Widget and Page variations
• Schedules
• Split tests
Pages and widgets

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• Further insights into the site
performance
§ Widgets
§ Keywords
§ Content
Analytics

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• Two types of profiles
§ Content
• Source (missing filter)
• Name
• Type
• Tags
• …
§ Visitors
• UUID, email...
• CCPA/GDPR Deletion
Request
Catalog

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• API Access
• API Explorer
• Event monitor
• Documentation (Discover)
Developer Resources

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• Domain settings • Sources
Administration
And Users!

14. The Case
www.findbolig.nu

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• Findbolig.nu is a platform to manage long and short term rental of residences
• Used by private landlords (individual or a minor business)
• Majority however is pension funds and larger organizations with a larger property
portfolio
• Different rental models: Adverts or waiting lists
• Several hundreds of thousand of users – some long & some short term
• Many different and very complex business rules, cross organizations, behind the
scene
• Purpose: To make rental residences easily visible for those needing it.
• Goal: To ensure no residence is without a tenant – minimize the idling time
What’s the site about

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• Main search
§ Filtering / Facets
§ Sorting
§ Paging
§ Suggestion
§ Ranking
§ Mixed results
§ Map search
§ ”Random” result
Search Features

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Search Features

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• New Residences – every day
Search Features

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• Similar residences – for inspiration
§ Criteria based on chosen residence
§ Price +/- x%
Search Features
§ M2 +/- y%
§ etc.

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• Predefined Searches & Search agents
§ Filtering / Facets
§ Member / not member
Search Features

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Featured
listings
Potential search features
Freetext
on listings
FAQ
Site
search

22. The case moves into Search

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• Entry points for crawling
§ Request
§ RSS
§ Sitemap
§ JS
Triggers

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• Which urls to follow
• Can have multiple, with different
definitions for different parts of the site
§ Only links within specific sections
§ Only links of specific class
§ Only PDF documents
• Editor based on Monaco
Request extractors

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• Used to define what content on the
page you actually want to have indexed
• Can have multiple, with different
definitions for different parts of the site
• Each extractor can have its own
content-type, set through available tags
• Manipulate your data when indexing
§ ”Computed fields”
• Editor based on Monaco
Document Extractors

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Document Extractors (2)

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• https://discover-
euc1.sitecorecloud.io/discover/v2/{id}
• rfk_id – the widget (and it’s rules)
• Keyphrase – the search term
• Sitecore Discover provides SDK UI
widgets
- but not Sitecore Search
Search API endpoint

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Results: Search response

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API Explorer

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• Search request linked to widget
• Widgets can have boosting rules
Refinement

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• You record events to use search stats
and personalization
• https://discover.sitecorecloud.io/event/
v4/publish/{customerKey}
• Part of SDK (to come)
Insights: Record events

32. Conclusion

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• Issues
§ Tech admin role
§ Shaky UI
§ Logs
§ Infinite scrolling
§ Documentation
§ Job overview and abortion
§ Missing SDK
=> lot of work in relation to insights and
enabling features on Frontend
§ In migration scenarios: fitting markup?
• Benefits
§ Incredible flexibility
§ Highly configurable
§ SaaS
§ Fast
§ Standard search feature set and much
more
§ Insights / Analytics
§ Split test
Findings

34. ” –
We see a big potential and loads of use cases for
the product – and pinning Dave O’ Flanagan to his
promise of focusing on bringing the existing
products through stabilzation, documentation and
best practices, we cannot wait to get going with it
Jesper & Sebastian

35. We are proud community members!
Please contact us on the following handles:
sitecorechat.slack.com twitter
sitecorechat.slack.com twitter
jballe @BalleJesper
psWinslow @W1nsl0w

36. Thank you!
Happy searching
Best regards
Jesper and Sebastian
From