Step 3: Configure Your Search Backend

Once you have content in the platform that can be indexed, it’s time to set up the configuration that specifies what data to index and how in your Search experience. Review the Search Backend track for conceptual explanations and introductions on each feature. Check out the reference doc category for Search Config Properties for the full list of properties supported by each feature.

Note that not all features in this guide will be relevant for every experience. This is meant as a checklist to help you consider all possible features.

Note

If you are building a multi-language Search experience, first decide how to structure the backend (i.e. whether you’ll use one or multiple configs). Check out the Multi-Language Search Configuration unit for more info.

1. Create a new Search configuration or duplicate an existing one .

2. Set up verticals and the settings for each vertical.

   1. Add verticals to the experience.
      • Be sure to add saved filters to specify the entities that are allowed to be returned in a given vertical.

   2. Searchable fields - Specify which fields to index and the algorithm that should be used for each. Required for every vertical.

      • Review the Searchable Fields Best Practices for recommendations on when to use each type of searchable field..
      • Start by filling out the basic searchable fields and add on more search functionality later based on search quality. Adding too many fields upfront may obscure search quality.
        

   3. Display fields - By default, Search will return all fields associated with an entity in the API response, but we recommend using this optional property to return only specified fields in order to increase Search API latency.

      1. Fields from related entities are not included in the API response by default, so if you want to display fields from related entities on the frontend, you must specify them as display fields.
      2. Anytime you include the display fields property, you must include ALL fields you want to display on the front end of that vertical.

   4. Direct answers - Select fields to display results that directly answer search queries at the top of the results, in the form of either field value direct answers (from structured data) or featured snippets (from unstructured data).

   5. Facets and filters - Set fields as facets and filters for users to refine their search results on the frontend.

   6. Sorting - Add default sorting.

      1. Dynamic reranking - Turn this on for verticals to allow the algorithm to gradually optimize the order of results based on the number of clicks on results.

   7. Vertical ranking - Adjust properties to influence which verticals are returned and how they rank against each other in search.

   8. If you need to set up a third-party vertical, follow this reference doc .

3. Set up search-level configurations that apply across the whole search experience. You might have pre-existing or known logic for the following, but otherwise these can be configured when running test searches and/or QAing the staging link to improve search quality.

   1. Synonyms - Specify words and phrases that Search should consider as equivalent in meaning. We recommend starting with fewer (or no) synonyms and adding them as you test how search quality performs and find that it’s actually needed.
   2. Query rules - Adjust search results with precise rules. We recommend adjusting your core configuration first before adding query rules to modify results returned by the algorithm.
   3. Query suggestions - Suggest a range of prompts that will autocomplete user search queries. We recommend targeting your organization’s KPIs, showing the breadth of entity types and Search features covered, and making sure results for the prompts look good.
   4. Bounding box - If this experience includes geolocation search for locations that are contained within a region, add a bounding box to narrow the geographical area searched by the algorithm to improve search quality.

4. (International) Set the supported locale(s) of your Search experience to match the locale(s) of the entities you are trying to return in the account.

   • If your entity profiles are using a locale of “English” (en), then the requested locale needs to be exactly “en”. Requests for other similar locales like “en_GB” or “en_US” will only return profiles with that exact locale.

5. (Healthcare) Follow the Set Up Your Search Configuration for Healthcare guide.

   • If your organization is in the healthcare space, consider incorporating the Yext Healthcare Taxonomy into your Search configuration. This allows users to search for specific conditions (think “knee pain”) and return doctors with the appropriate corresponding Yext Category.

6. Use Test Search to easily run test queries to ensure the expected results are returning. Make tweaks to the configuration to optimize the search results or note search queries that need to be improved. You’ll do more thorough QA in a couple of steps.