Great search technology empowers people to make smarter and more well-informed decisions more quickly. Company leadership, employees and customers can all benefit from leveraging search data more efficiently.
But how does one go about getting the most out of search? And how do you identify great search technology in the first place?
We Aren’t Always Sure What We’re Looking For. Great Search Makes Discovery Easy.
The ultimate search engine should read our minds, right? We aren’t always certain of exactly what we want. But we have an idea.
Search done right can “read our minds” and help us find the missing pieces of information we need to complete tasks successfully. For example, a shopper on her lunch break will leverage an ecommerce site’s search tool to discover the perfect dress for her next date night. Was it luck? Not at all. That’s just one smart search engine.
What that shopper doesn’t notice is that behind the scenes that search engine has used AI tools to “discover” her interests and populate the search results with fabulous date night dresses based on her preferences. It accomplishes this by reviewing millions of similar search queries, combing over product reviews and identifying dresses that were most likely to be purchased with similar keywords.
And it just earned that business another sale.
So how do we use discovery to make search even better? It all comes back to the technology. The algorithm that works behind the scenes should be smart enough to catch spelling errors, identify synonyms, match phrases and make connections in a fraction of the time it takes to blink an eye.
Additionally, search should be smart enough to autocomplete a query being typed out in real time. The data it returns should give the searcher a handful of useful options that are directly related to his or her search query. And filters should be available to make that discovery even more efficient.
When We Do Know What We’re Looking For, We Need to Find It Fast
This should come as no surprise, but leveraging search data effectively has a lot to do with how fast a user can find that data in the first place.
Every search engine must compete at The Speed of Google. That’s a high bar even for the most advanced search tech companies. But search technology must match those speeds because this is what our customers and employees have come to expect from search.
The speed of search relies on two factors: the efficiency of the algorithm to quickly match queries with data, and the intuitiveness of the interface that a customer or employee will use to engage said data.
Algorithms must regularly index data and even learn from query searches over time to reach the unreal speeds of Google search. And no intuitive interface would be complete without instant query results and auto-completion.
Lastly, We Cannot Truly Leverage Search Data Without Analytics
Search allows companies to tap into their customer’s and employee’s brains directly by finding out what they’re looking for and what they click on. In aggregate, search analytics is a bit like having a mind reading superpower. Only instead of fighting crime, we’re improving the customer experience, sourcing the next bestsellers in our stores, and saving time for both our customers and employees.
Companies have dozens of analytics platforms to choose from. But the most robust search analytics will be connected directly to the search engine itself, providing an unrivaled account of what customers are looking at, clicking on, and typing out.
Want to read your customer’s minds? Swiftype can help.
We designed Swiftype as the ultimate discovery engine that delivers queries at The Speed of Google and offers mindreading search insights with a powerful proprietary analytics platform.
To learn more about Swiftype and how it can benefit your business, check out Swiftype Site Search.
To learn more about Swiftype and how it can benefit your business, check out our Asana Case Study