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. You will configure business rules and search logic to define the scope of what the Search algorithms should return.

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 complete list of properties supported by each feature.

Create a Search Configuration

Start by creating or duplicating a Search configuration. 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).

Set Up Vertical Configurations

For each vertical in your experience, add the following:

1. Verticals: Add verticals, specifying which entities can be returned in each one using saved filters.
   
2. Searchable Fields: Specify which fields to index and the algorithm for each. This is required for every vertical.
   
   • Review the Searchable Fields Best Practices document for recommendations on when to use each type of searchable field.
     
   • Best Practice: Start with a few basic searchable fields and add more later based on search quality. Adding too many upfront may obscure search performance.
     
3. Display Fields: Use this optional property to specify which fields should be returned in the API response, which helps decrease API latency. By default, the API response returns all fields associated with the entity.
   
   • The API response does not return fields from related entities by default, so you must specify them as display fields if you want to display them in the frontend.
     
   • Note: If you use this property, you must include all fields you want to display on the front end.
     
4. Direct Answers: Select fields to display results that directly answer user queries at the top of the results, either as field value direct answers (from structured data) or featured snippets (from unstructured data).
   
5. Facets and Filters: Set fields as facets and filters to allow users to refine their search results.
   
6. Sorting: Specify how you want results sorted by default.
   
7. Dynamic Reranking: Turn this on to allow the algorithm to gradually optimize the order of results based on the number of clicks received.
   
8. Vertical Ranking: Configure properties to adjust which verticals are returned and how they rank against each other in search.

Set Up Search-Level Configurations

These configurations apply across your entire search experience. You might have pre-existing or known logic for the following, but otherwise these can be configured and fine-tuned when running test searches to improve search quality.

• Synonyms: Specify words and phrases that Search should consider equivalent. We recommend starting with a minimal list and adding more as needed to improve search quality
  
• 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.
  
• Query Suggestions: Suggest a range of prompts to autocomplete user search queries. We recommend targeting your organization’s KPIs, showcasing the breadth of your data, and ensuring prompt results look good.
  
• Generative Answers: Enable AI-generated summaries of top search results to be displayed at the top of the page.
• Bounding Box: To get more accurate results when searching for locations within a specific region, add a bounding box to limit the geographic area the algorithm searches.

Set Up Specialized Configurations

• International: Set the supported locale(s) to match your entities.
  
  • Note: If your entity profiles use the locale “English” (en), then the requested locale must be exactly “en.” Requests for similar locales like “en_GB” or “en_US” will only return profiles with that exact locale.
    
• Healthcare: Follow the Set Up Your Search Configuration for Healthcare guide.
  
  • Consider incorporating the Yext Healthcare Taxonomy to allow users to search for specific conditions (like “knee pain”) and return doctors with the appropriate Yext Category.
    
• Third-Party Verticals: If needed, follow this reference doc to set up a third-party vertical.

Test and Refine

• Use Test Search to run test queries and ensure you get the expected results. Make tweaks to optimize the configuration and identify areas for improvement. You’ll do more thorough QA in a couple of steps.