Search tuning

Welcome

In this module, you will learn how to optimize ranking and relevance components to deliver desired search results.

After completing this module, you should be able to:

• Identify search types and how search components affect results rankings.
• Describe the ways administrators can boost or bury products based on product searches.
• Define various options used to tune and optimize search settings.

Search Tuning

Search tuning is a process that can be used to determine which attributes of a document are indicative of relevance and then adjust the ranking algorithm to match these attributes.

Use search settings, found in the Admin Console under Administration > System > Settings, to enable or disable search features in Configured Commerce to format how search works on your website.

Use Boosting to influence the scores of search results.

• If you don’t like the order of your results, you can try to improve it with boosting
• Boosts are a multiplier to the base scores (1 = no change)
• Document level boosts (require re-indexing) – Product, Category, Brand, Product Line, Previously Ordered
• Field boosts to change the relative weight of matches on different fields
• Query boosts change the relative weight of different parts of the query
• If you want a product to always show on top, use Sponsored Search
• Search ranking references all the components that affect search results rankings. Understanding these components is critical to improving how your content is surfaced in customer search queries.

Search ranking and relevance

Search components have been put into the following groups: Search Types, Query Types, Indexable Fields, Product Search, and Boosting & Search Result Rankings.

Read the article below to learn more about search ranking and relevance in Configured Commerce.

How do I boost or bury search results?

Administrators can boost or bury particular product searches, depending on various business requirements. Take a closer look at boosting and burying adjustment options by reading the article.

How can I use search tuning settings?

Configured Commerce has many search capabilities to improve your customers' experience on your website. Read this below article to learn search tuning settings.

How does purchase history impact search results?

When you enable the setting to boost search results by purchase history, the system captures and indexes customer purchase history data. After you rebuild the product search index, all products included in orders for a customer bill-to, within the values set on the Frequently Purchased Threshold and the Lookback Months for Purchase History Boosting settings, are flagged as frequently purchased.

All products included in orders for a customer bill-to at least once, but less than the values set on the Frequently Purchased Threshold and Lookback Months for Purchase History Boosting settings, are flagged as less frequently purchased.

When customers search for products on your website, the system will boost any product flagged as frequently purchased for the current bill-to customer based on the Boost Amount for Frequently Purchased Products setting. They system will also boost (or bury) any products flagged as less frequently purchased based on the Boost Amount for Less Frequently Purchased Products setting.

Product boosting

On your own, you can walk through the steps listed in the Product boosting article using your training site.

Category boosting

On your own, you can walk through the steps listed in the Category boosting article using your training site.

Try it

It’s time to play in the Configured Commerce sandbox!

The following practice exercises take place in the Knowledge & Learning training site. Before jumping in, please log in to the Training site using the following credentials:

• Username: TrainingUser
• Password: Opticon1!#

After logging in, do the following:

1. Product boosting
2. Category boosting

Wrap up

Congratulations! You have completed the module. You should now be able to:

• Identify search types and how search components affect results rankings.
• Describe the ways administrators can boost or bury products based on product searches.
• Define various options used to tune and optimize search settings.

Learn more

While we covered a lot, there's always more to learn about products and how to work with them!

Check out the below link for an up-to-date collection of helpful guides and technical documentation.