Search Webinar

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Search Webinar
How to find things good
Presentation by Garry Pejski
March 26, 2019
#RogersDigital digital.rogers.com

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• Search is the strongest indicator of user intent. When someone is using search, they are looking for something
specific.
• Good search increases customer satisfaction as they are able to find what they are looking for.
• It drives more business as users can find products they are looking to buy.
• When a user can find what they are looking for, they won’t be calling your support center or going to your retail
locations. It’s a great way to take pressure off your staff and reduce costs.
Why Is Search Important
Search Webinar | How to find things good

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Search Architecture
CMS
Product
Catalog
Other
Datasources
ETL Search Data
File
Search Engine
Data Ingestion /
Indexing
Configuration
Search
API
Merchandiser / Search
Tuner
Website
Mobile App
Anything Else

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• Document (or records) – Data related to everything on your site. A potential search result.
o Some fields will be used for search, others for configuration (biasing & filters) another others for rendering search results
(product image)
o Usually there is no harm to include more data than you need, you can always choose to use it later if you wish.
• Query – The search term(s) a user has entered in the search box on your site.
• Recall – Does a document get returned? How many results should be returned?
• Relevancy – What order is it returned in? ‘Best’ results should be at the top.
Search Concepts

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Your data will contain fields for everything about your documents.
• {type: Support, title: How to unlock my Samsung phone, popularity: 700}
• {type: Support, title: How to unlock my Android phone, popularity: 200}
• {type: Product, title: iPhone XS Max, brand: Apple, popularity: 650}
• {type: Product, title: Samsung Galaxy S10, brand: Samsung, popularity: 600}
• {type: Product, title: Google Pixel 3, brand: Google, popularity: 900}
• Records don’t need to have the same schema.
• You define which fields should be made searchable.
• The quality of your search results depends on the quality of your data.
Data

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Let’s start with only the title field being searchable
Search query = ‘Samsung’
1. {type: Support, title: How to unlock my Samsung phone, popularity: 700}
2. {type: Product, title: Samsung Galaxy S10, brand: Samsung, popularity: 600}
The order of the two records is not guaranteed because each document has only 1 hit against the term ‘Samsung’.
The fields you make searchable should include words that your users are searching on. However, making too many fields searchable creates
too many search results and starts including things that are unrelated to what your users are searching for.
Search Example 1 – Basic Search

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Now let’s make the brand field searchable as well
Search query = ‘Samsung’
The Galaxy S10 result is guaranteed to be first because there are now 2 hits on that document.
Search Example 2 – More Searchable Fields

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Recall
• Spell Correction – User searched for this, actually search for this instead
o Most engines have some built in capability around this built in
• Stop Words – Remove these words from the user query
• Synonyms – Search for the query term and also this
• Filters – Give users tools to refine search results down
Relevancy
• Boosting (or biasing) – Tell the search engine that the values of a field should affect its relevancy.
o This is the primary way search engines control search results.
o This is not a sort. Boosting on a field, means it’s contributes to the overall search relevancy strategy.
o You will typically have multiple boosts.
• Pinning – Force specific documents to the top positions for a query.
• Sorting – Ignore relevancy and sort by this value.
Search Engine Configuration

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Search query = ‘Android’
1. {type: Support, title: How to unlock my Android phone, popularity: 200}
Let’s create a synonym of Android to Samsung & Google.
2. {type: Product, title: Google Pixel 3, brand: Google, popularity: 900}
The Galaxy S10 & Google Pixel results are guaranteed to be first because there are now 2 hits on those documents.
The unlock android phone will be third because it’s an exact match on the term, not a synonym.
Search Example 3 – Synonyms

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A great way to allow your users to narrow down the search results in order to find exactly what they are
looking for.
Filters:
• Type
o Product (3)
o Support (2)
• Brand
o Apple (1)
o Google (1)
o Samsung (1)
Filters

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Search query = ‘Android’. Remember we have a synonym for Android to Samsung & Google.
Now let’s add a boost to the popularity field.
Search engines typically have a default set of boosts (called a relevancy strategy) that is intended to produce good results for the bulk
of your search queries. You also have the ability to apply a different relevancy strategy any time an exception to that strategy makes
more sense.
Search Example 4 – Boosting

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You should have reporting and processes to identify where search isn’t producing good results and give the information
you need to configure your engine to fix things (but always be careful about breaking other searches!).
Internal Reports
• Search Engagement – How frequently are users using search
• Top search terms – What are the top queries
• Top null searches – What are the top queries that return no results
• Search Success Rate – What percentage of searches do users click on a result
• Top No Success Searches – What are the top queries where users don’t click on a result
• Search Conversion – When a user searches for a product how frequently do they go on to purchase?
• Click Rank – What is the average result position for a search query
External Reports
• Regular Search Audit – Review your search results regularly with the team creating the content
• Search Report – What insights can be derived from user search that can drive business decisions
Search Reports

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Internet search engines like google.com follow the same principles, except google controls the search engine and the data is
your website.
SEO is building your website to be as google friendly as possible, as before, search results are only good as the data going
into the engine.
Website attributes that become data for google:
• Site content - page title, text on the page, etc. Does your content include keywords that users are searching on?
• Page readability – Can google easily crawl all the content on your page?
• URL – Short urls with strong keywords, not too many nesting levels
• Page load speeds – The importance of this for google has recently increased
• Mobile friendliness – Google’s crawler has a mobile first mindset
• External links – The more sites that link to yours, the more authority you’re considered to have
• And many, many other factors – More than 200 different factors
Search Engine Optimization

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• Good search makes for happy customers, increased revenue and reduced costs.
• The quality of search is dependent on the quality of your data.
• Understanding the language that your users search in should inform how your content is created.
• Understanding your content/data and what your users are searching on is essential to tuning your search engine.
• The quality of your search results need to be reviewed regularly. The quality of your search can drop when data changes or when users
start searching for terms you haven’t seen before.
• Your relevancy strategy should also be reviewed regularly. Your default strategy should work for the vast majority of your queries.
Always look to be reducing the number of rules/exceptions you have configured.
• Search reports should not just help your configure search, it should also drive business decisions.
Summary
Confidential | Presentation Title

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