Create a rule to blacklist certain queries

Search Best Practices - Search Configuration
1

Hi,

A financial customer would like to blacklist all the queries with more than two digits. This is because sometimes users write their account number on the search bar by mistake multiple times. As a result, the search bar can prompt an account number as a possible query.
Is it possible to create a formula for the blacklisted queries to specify that every time we have more than 2 digits, the query should be blacklisted?

Thank you!

Fede

2

Hi! Bringing this question up as we still didn’t find a solution and we were wondering if someone had a similar usecase!

Fede

3

@Federica_Carrus ,

I’m following myself as I’m curious. I don’t know that the popularQueriesBlacklistedTerms property accepts a regular expression value–I couldn’t find any mention that it does in the documentation. If it does, you’d be able to configure a regex criteria (^[\d]{2,}$ ) to blacklist all of those queries that match it.

What is the intended result when a user searches such a query? I was hoping that popular queries had some sort of logic that suppressed terms that return no results. If that were the case, you could accomplish this in a roundabout way with an Answers query rule where any query that matched the “Search Term matches regex” = ^[\d]{2,}$ would return no results. Either way, creating the rule might deter users from continuing to search those queries if they know it won’t return any results.

4

Hi Federica and Zach,

Currently, there is no functionality to add a formula or regex for blacklisted queries. However, this is a good idea and could be helpful in other cases! I would recommend adding a feature request to the Ideas board, upvoting the post, and adding any details about functionality/use cases for the Product team to consider for a future release.

1 Like
5

Hi Micaela,

Thanks for your recommendation here! The use case is a financial client that wants to avoid bank account details popping out in the popular queries. We were also wondering if it’s possible to restrict the search input from users in Yext Search to alpha characters only. Ideally, we need to restrict customers from adding account numbers or email addresses into the search and it would be good to understand if it’s possible to block numeric and special characters.

Any thoughts on this?

I will submit my blacklisted query idea soon!

Fede

1 Like
6

Hi Fede,

This would require a similar solution as your previous question (i.e., regex for blacklisted queries). The Product team is aware of the importance of this type of functionality and is looking into it!

Best,
Micaela

7

Hey Micaela,

Thanks for your reply, here is the idea I submitted, adding it so everyone is aware of where we stand with this update!

Fede