This document discusses search analytics and Sematext's search analytics product. It summarizes Sematext's search analytics software, which collects search data using Flume and stores it in HBase. It then generates reports to help optimize search experiences. The software provides insights to help search providers and satisfies the needs of search users.

1. Search Analytics
Business Value
&
NoSQL Backend
Otis Gospodnetić – Sematext International
@otisg ◦ @sematext ◦ sematext.com
sematext.com/search-analytics

2. About Otis Gospodnetić
• ASF Member: Lucene, Solr, Nutch, Mahout
• Author: Lucene in Action 1 & 2
• Entrepreneur: Sematext, Simpy
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

3. Sematext Metrics
● 100% organic: no GMO, no VC
● 4 years old
● < 10 people
● 7 countries
● 3 timezones
● 2 continents
● > 100 customers
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

4. About Sematext
Products & Services
Consulting, Development, Tech Support:
● Search (Lucene, Solr, ElasticSearch...)
● Big Data (Hadoop, HBase, Voldemort...)
● Web Crawling (Nutch, Droids)
● Machine Learning (Mahout)
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

5. Agenda
● What is Search Analytics and why it matters
● Example reports and their value
● What we built, why, and how
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

6. Communication
● twitter.com/sematext
● twitter.com/otisg
● hash tags: #stsa or #stanalytics
● http://sematext.com/search-analytics/index.html
● Raise your hand!
● otis@sematext.com
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7. The Compass
Search logs are your Map
Search Analytics is your Compass
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8. High Level Why
search
users
search
experience
search
providers
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9. High Level Why
This search sucks!
It takes 17 tries to find anything here!
F!?@#$%^&?!?
search
users
search
experience
search
providers
Cool, the latest search tweaks
made our site really sticky!
Awesome!
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10. Don't Be Like This Dude
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11. Got Clue?
Performance Monitoring
Tuning Search Analytics UI
Quality Assurance
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12. More Concrete Why
● Measure and monitor everything. Introspection.
● Supports (re)design, navigation choices
● Helps with content acquisition & enhancement
● Improve search experience
● Mula
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13. The Moment of Truth
Question for the audience #1
What do you use for Search Analytics?
a) Home grown stuff
b) Google Analytics
c) Omniture
d) Webtrends
e) Other
f ) Nothing
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14. Search Analytics Outline
● Collect: queries & clicks & interactions & ...
● Analyze: actions / xactions / conversions
● Output: reports – over time
● Output++: feedback loop remember this
● The means, not the goal
● Ongoing, not one-off
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

15. Search vs. Web Analytics
● User intent and information needs vs. inferring
● Hand in hand
● Ideally you can relate data from both or even
unify it
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

16. Example Core Reports
● Rate & Volume, Latency (mean, avg, 90%)
● Click Through Rate, Mean Reciprocal Rank
● Top Queries by count, clicks, 0 hits...
● Query Trending
● Top Seen Docs, Top Clicked Docs (msft)
● Page & Click Depth
● Facet & Sort Usage
● ...
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17. More Reports in More Detail
● See Search Analytics What? Why?
How?
http://blog.sematext.com/tag/analytics/
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18. Part Dos
Switching gears... Juno digs NoSQL
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19. What We've Built
● Search Analytics SaaS
● Numerous reports (e.g. query volume,
rate, latency, term frequencies /
comparisons, hit buckets, search origins,
etc.)
● Trending over time
● Comparisons of time periods
● Top N reports
● Filter, slice and dice
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

20. Who Needs a Compass?
● We need it
● search-hadoop.com & search-lucene.com
● Our customers need it!
● You?
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21. Sematext Search Analytics
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22. Big Dreams
● SaaS
● Multitenant
● Large Scale – Massive Data
● Cloud
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23. Storage Choices
● RDBMS: MySQL, PostgreSQL
● HDFS
● Hive
● HBase
● Cassandra
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24. SaaS vs. In-House
Question for the audience #2
SaaS vs in-house Search Analytics?
a) SaaS
b) in-house
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25. Sematext Search Analytics
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26. Sematext Search Analytics
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27. Sematext Search Analytics
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28. Sematext Search Analytics
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29. Data Flow
● See Search Analytics with Flume and HBase
http://blog.sematext.com/2010/10/16/search-analytics-hadoop-world-flume-hbase/
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

30. Data Collection
● See Search Analytics with Flume and HBase
http://blog.sematext.com/2010/10/16/search-analytics-hadoop-world-flume-hbase/
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

31. Core Tech
● JavaScript Beacons
● Metric Capture Web App aka Receiver
● Flume Agents, Collectors, Sinks
● HBase
● MapReduce Aggregations
● Search Analytics Reporting Web App
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32. What is Flume
● Distributed data/log collection service
● Scalable, configurable, extensible
● Centrally manageable, open source
● Agents get data from app, Collectors save it
● Abstractions: Source → Decorator(s) → Sink
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33. What is HBase
● Scalable, reliable, distributed, column-oriented DB
● On top of HDFS
● MapReducable
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34. Data Flow, Detailed
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35. Why Flume
● Reliable delivery
● e.g. queue msgs locally if destination unreachable
● Easy, centralized management via Web UI or
console
● Good community, good progress, now @ASF
● But: more complex, more moving parts
● On Flume: slideshare.net/cloudera/inside-flume
● Alternatives: Kafka, Scribe...
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36. Why HBase
● Scalable raw & aggregate data storage
● MapReduce data input
● Fast scans for time ranges, fast key lookups
● Easy storage and compute power expansion
● Good looking roadmap, community, progress
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37. Open Sourcing
● 2 open-source projects:
github.com/sematext/HBaseWD
github.com/sematext/HBaseHUT
● See sematext.com/open-source/index.html
● Patches for Flume and HBase
blog.sematext.com/tag/flume/
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38. Challenges
● Data size. Solutions:
● Compression (4-5x smaller with lzo)
● Data pruning (variable levels)
● Query string distribution: very long-tail
● Lots of data to process, update, aggregate
● Young tools: Flume, HBase
● Poor IO on EC2
● Hadoop distributions
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39. Output++
● AutoComplete - $MM improvement
● Better DYM Spellchecker
● Related Searches
● Recommendations
● Relevance Feedback
● ...
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40. Closing the Loop
search
users
search
experience
search
providers
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41. Resource
Search Analytics for Your Site
Louis Rosenfeld
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/searchanalytics/
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

42. We're Hiring
Dig Search?
Dig Analytics?
Dig Big Data?
Dig Performance?
Dig working with and in open-source?
We're hiring world-wide!
http://sematext.com/about/jobs.html
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.

43. Contact
sematext.com
blog.sematext.com
@sematext
@otisg
otis@sematext.com
Want SA? Grab me or go to:
sematext.com/search-analytics
Hash tags: #stsa or #stanalytics
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Copyright 2011 Sematext Int'l. All rights reserved.