Steps to implement a search

This post discusses the steps to implement search in any applications.

Set up
Set up the search engine and indexing options are considered as the first step in search implementation.

• Hosting: Hosting the search tool.
• Indexing: Indexing the data.
• Index frequency: Configuring the index. (Daily, Monthly)

Configure
This step includes any configuration related to the search.
Metadata - Used for faceting, sorting, ranking, relevance.
Breadcrumbs - for better navigation.
Pagination - for better navigation.
Recent Searches - Search assist.
Search suggestions(Did you mean) - Search assist.
Autocomplete - Search assist.

Fine-tune
Once search implementation is done, we need to fine-tune the search by analyzing the results.

Promotion: Normal, Based on search results, we can promote.
Dictionaries: Configure for better results.
Banners: any organizational promotion.
Redirects: Send the user to a page.

General considerations to choose your future search platform.

Search Management and Maintenance -
Thinking about previous data migration and future search upgrades.

User experience -
Different user interface for a range of use cases.

Content -
Which resides in file repositories, document management system, database or CRM applications.

Classifying and unifying cross-system data -
Content processing and defining metadata for the new indexes.

Hybrid Scenarios -
Search data from on-premise and cloud.

Result set customization -
An efficient way of displaying results.

Ranking & Relevance -
Fine-tuning the order of results.

The migration process -
Provide transparent, solid experience to the end-users, Educate the users about the new system.