Search 3.0
Products:
We are happy to announce that we have released our Search version 3.0, a significantly improved product based on our new search engine.
At Clerk.io, we continuously review and enhance our products to match our customers’ needs and expectations. In our effort to do so, we have implemented some technical changes to our search that have resulted in a series of improvements:
- Optimized indexation time (specially relevant for extensive catalogues)
- Optimized performance of all search activity (including queries with many hits)
- Optimized performance of facets (specially relevant for customers using a large number of facets).
- More flexibility when it comes to adjusting search settings:
- Decide what attributes are filterable and sortable in your site’s search
- Exclude attributes from search when necessary (e.g. margin).
- Alter the ranking order of searchable attributes if needed.
- Disable typo tolerance for specific attributes if required.
- Create a custom dictionary to let Clerk.io know what specific letter sets should be considered as single search terms.
Read more about Search Configuration in our Help centre.
How will these improvements impact your store?
- You will get a much faster auto-completion of searches, meaning less waiting time for your visitors, and more accurate predicted searches.
- You will save time on manual optimizations. Thanks to a better typo correction feature, and better handling of composite word searches, your visitors will see more relevant results and less “no result” searches.
An easier to understand, more transparent search ranking
The search results with Search 3.0 are ranked in a specific order, according to the following rules:
- Typos: results without typo correction are returned first
- Exactness: matches without autocompletion are returned first
- Proximity: matches where the different words of the search query are closest to each other are returned first, which is great for multi-word searches.
- Attributes: the different attributes get their own ranking order for example “name”, “keywords”, “brand” are by default prioritized higher than the product description. But as mentioned before, this is a rule you can adapt to your store’s needs under Search Configuration.
- Popularity: updated relevance within sales-based ranking.
In general, Search 3.0. seeks to ensure a better search experience for your visitors and higher conversion for your store.
How to transition to Search 3.0?
As part of the release plan, we will progressively rollout Search 3.0 to all customers in the next 2-3 months.
If you want to start using the latest and improved version of our Search product, you can enable it yourself in your store(s).
In your Clerk.io store, navigate to Settings > Features. And scroll down to Early access features.
There you will see two different options for Search 3.0:
Search 3.0. in Demo Store: you can enable this option to test the feature in our demo environment to make sure it works as desired. After enabling it, you can navigate to Store settings and click on “Explore demo store” where you will be able to test the feature in a safe and controlled way.
Search 3.0: once you have tested the feature in the demo store and if you feel satisfied with the results, you can start using the new search engine in your live store.
Note: If you have any questions or experience issues with Search 3.0 (either in the Demo Store or in your live site), please, contact our Support team.