What is Schema?

Schema refers to the structure or format of a document or set of documents in a search engine index. For example, an example news article schema might have the following fields: title, subtitle, author, sections, body, and publication date. This structure is extracted from the web page HTML by and filed away in this format in the search engine index.

In Swiftype

By default, Site Search’s web crawler extracts the following fields to populate the index schema: title (from the page’s <title> tag), body (from the page’s content),
and sections (from the page’s <h1> to <h6> tags).

Once these fields are indexed site owners can customize the search interface to render these pieces of information in the autocomplete or search results page. Site Search also allows site owners to customize their website schema with custom meta tags.

Within App search, the crawler is not used. Instead, users leverage a suite of API endpoints to create their search experiences. A user will index a set of documents. Upon indexing, a schema will be created. Afterwards, both the API and the dashboard both provide the option to further alter your schema to match the appropriate Field Types, like date, number, text, or geolocation.