Enhancing Site Search

Algolia offers a robust search solution for owners of large websites and intranets, especially those who are dissatisfied with their current search capabilities. For immediate search improvements, our basic service replaces Drupal's search with Algolia's powerful search on a single site.

Note: This service assumes clients can handle their own Algolia payments and does not include advanced features such as AI.

Benefits of a third-party search tool

Modern search tools allow you to go beyond strict keyword searching and offer some unique opportunities to better serve your site visitors and learn from their search behavior. Examples include:

• Fuzzy search. Searches find Searchers for “Jennifer Smith” would also get results for “Jenny Smith,” those looking for “Brian Lu” would get the correctly spelled “Bryan Lu.”
• Synonyms. Site owners can define synonyms. This is especially useful for acronyms, naming that is unique to Stanford, or technical terms. So, if someone searches for “msande” that could be made equivalent to “Management Science and Engineering” and “MS&E” or even other terms that might be more common names for that major at other universities.
• Reordering results. Many of these tools allow users to pin a result to the top of a list, completely reorder, or hide results for particular search terms. If your important overview page scores very low for relevance, you can still have it appear first in search results.
• “Faux” results. Many of these tools allow you to add in results on top of what is found on your site. If someone searched for something that appears on an auxiliary site to your main site, you can still represent that in your search results. This can include links to external platforms you might be using like Slate, Qualtrics, etc.
• Analytics. Most of these tools have analytics options that let you see what searches had results, which ones didn't, and what page they chose to select from the options provided. Search terms are a unique opportunity to learn what language/terms your site visitors use to find things, allowing you to respond to gaps in your content.

Site owners can opt for the following two options:

Self-service (coming soon!)

• Instructions for self-service setup provided

Guided option (available now)

• Guide on how to sign up in Algolia
• A 1.5-hour workshop covering:
  • Setup
  • Index creation
  • Payment setup
  • Content indexing
  • Basic configuration

If you are interested in adding Algolia to your site, please create a ServiceNow ticket for this request.