Search is something many feel should work coming out of the box, and it does. But to what extent? In most cases, business users want to extend their search platform to perform more complex tasks such as ranking, type ahead, and tagging. Sitecore leverages Solr out of the box with a base installation for search and backend processing. But this solution doesn’t offer additional features without extensive customizations. This is where additional search tools come into the picture. There are several leading search tools available today that have been tried and true while others are emerging.
Sitecore Search
In this blog, we will focus on Sitecore’s newest product offering Sitecore Search. Search at its origin began life as Reflektion. Its purpose was to provide a search experience that would support Commerce implementations by providing relevant content to help drive conversions. Reflektion was acquired by Sitecore and rebranded as Discover which remains their Commerce search tool leveraged for Order Cloud. By providing more relevant content, you not only help drive customer retention, reduce friction, but also help with conversions.
This mindset remained relevant for normal site search which is what helped bring life to Search. By addressing the same goals of relevant search content, Sitecore has also included other features to help increase customer satisfaction in their search. By offering personalization, you are able to tailor your search experience by persona. Personalization for Search take a cookie driven approach allowing you to store and access your users search behavior locally.
AI Search Engine
They have also included an AI engine that will help with, not only predictive search, but provide additional relevance to the user based on their search, or similar user behavior, search patterns. While AI remains a large topic of today’s technology world, it is not a technology that is new to Sitecore or Reflektion. AI predictions were part of Reflektion inception to adapt and provide a better experience for their users. So this recipe has been refined and proven over the years.
Today, if you visit Sitecore.com you will find a perfect use case for Sitecore Search. What you will find is a search experience that is lightning fast, with relevant content. By offering features like boosting, they are able to show content that is best suited for your needs. Sitecore also offers a feature on their site where you can toggle on/off the personalization that is being provided so that you can see how your content would differ with or without personalization.
The Future of Sitecore
Sitecore has been committed to taking an Agile approach for the Search product offering new features and functionality to consistently improve their offering. What we can expect to see in the future is an all-in-one search tool from Sitecore that combines the offering from both Discover and Search into a single solution. Out of the box, both solutions allow for indexing across multiple sites, providing a more robust search experience. I am excited to see what the future for Sitecore Search offers as they are looking to build upon what is an already robust offering.
