Search Merchandiser | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• What the Search Merchandiser is
• How to navigate the Search Merchandiser
• How to use the three modes of Search Merchandiser to change search results

Overview

While Search automatically returns results based on relevance, a business might want to adjust the search results for specific queries. Search Merchandiser is an easy way for Administrators to modify their search results in Search experiences using a drag-and-drop, point-and-click interface. This tool allows you to make changes directly within the search results with three modes:

• Reorder Entities
• Reorder Verticals
• Change Featured Snippets

Making changes in the reorder entities and reorder verticals modes will create or edit query rules under the hood. Changing featured snippets will add to experience training . Thus Search Merchandiser will be particularly useful for Administrators who aren’t familiar with query rules and Experience Training, or those who simply prefer to modify results through a quick and easy visual interface.

Navigating Search Merchandiser

Access the Search Merchandiser via Test Search, either full screen or the side bar, by clicking on the pencil icon to edit the search results.

You’ll be presented three different options for editing the search results:

Each action has a separate page for you to make changes on. Once you select a mode, these cards collapse into icons, allowing you to switch between modes while saving space on the page.

You can feel free to move between modes while making changes. If you make changes on both the Reorder Entities mode and Reorder Verticals mode, they will save in the same query rule. Once you make a change, you’ll notice the icon for that mode will say “Edited”. The query rule you create will be shown on the right side of the results.

We’ll go into more detail on each mode in the following sections.

Reorder Entities Mode

In the Reorder Entities mode, you’ll see an interface to move entities to the top or bottom of each vertical’s results.

Move entities into the blue boosted zone or gray buried zone for each vertical by either dragging and dropping them or using the boost and bury icons. You can control the order of the entities in the boosted and buried zones by dragging and dropping them. You can only set the order of entities in the boosted or buried zones.

You can also add new entities to the result set by clicking “Search entities” in the blue boosted zone and using the entity picker to select entities to add. Only entities that are included in this vertical will be shown. In other words, the entity picker respects any entity types and saved filters set in the backend config for this vertical. Added entities may only show in the boosted zone and removing it causes it to be removed from the results altogether.

Editing the order of entities returned creates a query rule, shown on the right side, that updates as you move entities around. The rule has:

• Criteria searchTermExactlyMatches set equal to the query entered
• Action BOOST_ENTITIES for any boosted entities, listing the entities in the order they appear in the boosted zone
• Action BURY_ENTITIES for any buried entities, listing the entities in the order they appear in the buried zone

The name of the query rule is filled in with When search term is “[search term]” by default. You can edit this name before saving the query rule.

Learn more about the boost and bury entities actions in the Action - Boost and Bury Entities query rules unit.

In the example below, we edit the results of the FAQs vertical for the query “Open jobs.” The FAQ “Are you open on the weekends?” is returning due to the word “open” in the search query, but it is irrelevant, so we bury it. We want to make sure the FAQs “What are the perks of working at Turtlehead Tacos?” and then “What is the application process like?” always show up in that order, so we boost it and rearrange it to that order.

Reorder Verticals Mode

The Reorder Verticals mode is similar to the Reorder Entities mode, except it involves reordering verticals instead of reordering entities. In this mode, the user cannot see individual results. They only see the list of verticals and result counts, like so:

You’ll notice that the changes we made in the Reorder Entities mode are still there! You are able to switch modes while making changes. All edits in Reorder Entities mode and Reorder Verticals mode will appear in the same query rule.

Similar to Reorder Entities mode, move verticals into the blue boosted zone or gray buried zone for each vertical by either dragging and dropping them or using the boost and bury icons. You can control the order of the verticals in the boosted and buried zones by dragging and dropping them. You can only set the order of verticals in the boosted or buried zones.

Editing the order of verticals returned creates a query rule, shown on the right side, that updates as you move verticals around. The rule has:

• Criteria searchTermExactlyMatches set equal to the query entered
• Action BOOST_VERTICALS for any boosted verticals, listing the verticals in the order they appear in the boosted zone
• Action BURY_VERTICALS for any buried verticals, listing the verticals in the order they appear in the buried zone

The name of the query rule is filled in with When search term is “[search term]” by default. You can edit this name before saving the query rule.

Learn more about the boost and bury verticals actions in the Action - Boost and Bury Verticals query rules unit.

Back to the same example, let’s say we want users looking at open jobs to read some job FAQs before diving into the job entities. We can boost the FAQs vertical and then the Jobs vertical, and set it in that order. We also noticed earlier the Help Articles vertical only had one result (“How to place a new order online”) that was not relevant, so we want to bury that vertical and make sure it shows up last. Since we covered all the verticals in the results, we actually don’t need to boost the Jobs vertical, so we return that to the normal verticals section.

Search Merchandiser Query Rules

Once you are done editing the results, you can save the Query Rule. This will create a new query rule in your backend config. From here, you can continue to edit the Query Rule. Click the pencil icon to edit directly in the Query Rules page. Click the trash can icon to delete the rule entirely.

Opening the Search Merchandiser for any search terms that already have a query rule will show the existing query rule on the right hand side.

Query Rule Support in Search Merchandiser

Currently the Search Merchandiser only supports:

• One query rule

• Criteria

  • Search term exactly matches (searchTermExactlyMatches)

• Action

  • Boost entities (BOOST_ENTITIES)
  • Bury entities (BURY_ENTITIES)
  • Boost verticals (BOOST_VERTICALS)
  • Bury verticals (BURY_VERTICALS)

If you enter the Search Merchandiser for a search term with multiple query rules or with a single query rule that has criteria or actions that are not supported, you’ll see a warning message (or multiple) in the Query Rules sidebar. Click the pencil icon to edit the query rule on the query rules page.

Change Featured Snippets Mode

The Change Featured Snippets mode uses Experience Training (not Query Rules like the first two modes), so it is independent of the other modes. You’ll only see this mode if the experience has a vertical with Document Search turned on. Otherwise there would be no Featured Snippets to train!

Similar to the Test Search screen, you’ll see a wand icon that allows you to train the Featured Snippet. This opens up the Featured Snippet modal where you can edit the snippet predicted by the algorithm. Check out the experience training unit to refresh your knowledge on how to use the Featured Snippet modal.