Autosuggest controls what kind of search is performed as readers begin typing in the search box, before they hit enter or click the search icon to run a full search. By default, we set autosuggest to return to readers while they type. When either type of autosuggest is enabled, readers will see up to 10 relevant results in a dropdown below the search bar.
To change autosuggest settings, go to Settings > Search.
There are three autosuggestion settings:
- Autosuggest articles to readers while they type: This setting will autosuggest articles as readers type. It is not typo-tolerant. If multiple words separated by spaces are used, it will match and return results on the words independently. For example, if I type "configuring", I will see autosuggestions that contain "configuring". If I type "configuring search", I will get autosuggestions containing either "configuring" or "search":
Sample gif showing autosuggest search. Hover to play. - Autosuggest articles and include fuzzy results: This setting will autosuggest articles as readers type, and it will also do "fuzzy" matching. Think of this like typo tolerance: searching for "remainder" might bring up articles with "reminder", searching for "good" may bring up articles with "Google". With fuzzy results turned on, the more precise match should bubble to the top of the autosuggestions:
Sample gif showing autosuggest search with fuzzy results. Hover to play.We recommend this setting with one caveat: for some customers with key search terms that are very close in spelling, it can increase the number of search results you get. So just be sure you test it to be sure it's helpful rather than noisy. - Do not autosuggest articles: Use this setting if you do not want any autosuggestions to appear as readers type. Readers will need to hit Enter or click the search icon to complete a full search and see any results.
For more details on what happens under the covers in autosuggest, see Autosuggest search.
Search weights determine the relevance each article field has in search. All fields start with a weight of 1 and have equal relevance in search. You can view your knowledge base's current relevance search weights by going to Settings > Search and looking in the Search Weights section.
Search Weights
The following fields are indexed for search:
- Title
- Permalink
- Body
- PDFs
- Meta description
- Search phrases
Search weights allow you to boost individual search fields. The weight represents how strong of a preference you’d like to give it.
For example, say that you set article titles to a weight of 10 and keep the other fields at 1. The search engine will still try and determine the best match across all fields using relevancy scoring algorithms. If the search finds a similar match in the title of one article and the body of another, the search weight will be used to bump up the score of the article with the matching title and it will rank higher.
See Dig into your weights for more information.
Search testing
Once you've made changes to your search weights, use Search Testing to quickly and easily test changes to search weights to see if they're producing the results you want/expect. The Search Testing section is just below the Search Weights section on Settings > Search.
Type a search term into the test search phrase field and hit enter (or click the magnifying glass). This will give you the search results and relevance score for up to 200 articles.
To see how a change to search weights will affect your results, adjust the weights and click the magnifying glass to refresh the search results. You can see how changes will affect the ranking and scoring of results.
You can also click on an article to open the editor to view and make adjustments to the searchable fields. Once you've made changes, search again to see how it affects the search results.
To improve the ranking of an article in search for a given search term, you can optimize the article by making sure the search term appears in the searchable fields. For example, if you want to be able to significantly boost an article for a search term, you can add it as a search phrase and boost the search weight of search phrases.
When you are happy with your weighting, click save to make the changes live. Adjusting search weights does not require a reindex.
