Create an index

In order to configure AI Search, you need a catalog that contains feed, so the search returns items after a customer types in a query.

Requirements

The list of requirements is available here.

Create an index

1. Go to AI Search > Indexes.

2. Click Add index.
   Result: The index creation wizard opens.

3. From the Choose feed dropdown list, select an item feed based on which you would like to create an index. The list includes only feeds with the search engine option enabled.

   WARNING: Remember that the value of an item attribute in the item catalog cannot be longer than 1000 characters. It applies both for creating a new index and updating it.

4. From the Choose search language dropdown list, select the language of the search.

5. Click Next step.

6. Select one of the search methods:

   • Keyword - searching for information using specific words or phrases that are relevant to the desired topic or subject. To take full advantage of it, request full access.
   • Semantic - connects words and phrases to interpret digital content similarly to human comprehension, offering personalized, accurate results. Governed by search intent and semantic meaning, it aims to decode content contextually for precision. By taking a holistic approach, it assesses word meanings and relationships, similar to human language interpretation. The goal is to eliminate irrelevant results for an enhanced user experience. To take full advantage of it, request full access.
   • Hybrid - combines the two approaches, with a weighting ratio of 70% for keyword-based and 30% for semantic search. In practice, this involves the weighted average of two normalized scores. We highly recommend opting for the Hybrid search method as semantic search proves invaluable in situations where keyword-based searches fail to yield satisfactory results. To take full advantage of it, request full access.
   Tip: These methods are available in the public preview module.

7. Regardless of the search method type, select the searchable attributes and assign importance to each of them (assigning importance is available only for attributes for keyword method).
   Searchable attributes are used by the search engine to calculate the item’s relevance to the query phrase provided by the customer. Attributes can be assigned to three importance levels: high, medium and low. When a word from the phrase matches an attribute, the score amount is assigned depending on importance assigned to the attribute.
   

   Important: It is important to select as searchable attribute those which contain the most descriptive information about the item. Usually these are the title or description attributes from the item feed. We recommend that on average, the combined length of the selected attribute values to be longer than 50 words.

8. If you want to display unavailable items in the search results, enable the Include out of stock items toggle.

9. Click Next step.

10. Optionally, you can select item attributes which will be used as response, filterable, facetable, and sortable attributes.

    • Filterable attributes - Attributes for use in item filters for including or excluding results. Including an attribute value narrows down the search results to items with that attribute value. Excluding values of an attribute displays results with items that have different values of these attributes.
    • Facetable attributes - Attributes that can be use as facets. Facets allow customers to sort search results by attributes and their values. For example, you can use the color attribute as facetable to let the customers select which colors they’re interested in.
    • Response attributes - Attributes which will be included in the search response. For each item returned, only attributes defined in this section will be available in the search response such as price, item description, color, size, so you can show them to the customers. We recommend choosing only those attributes that are strictly necessary for intended purposes.
    • Sorting attributes - You can enable sorting the results by the chosen attributes. You can add both range and text attributes. Sorting by range attributes allows you to arrange the returned items from the highest to the lowest value of the specified attribute. Sorting by text attributes allows you to order the results in an alphabetic order, ascending or descending.
    • Disabled prefix search - You can disable the prefix search for specific attributes. This will prevent the search engine from trying to auto-complete the phrase for these attributes. Keep in mind that if the search engine will not find any items for the phrase it will still try to check for typos.

11. In the Item ranking section, define the criteria for sorting items in search results. This can be managed using the following three options:

    • AI Personalization - Use the slider to boost search results based on user preferences.
    • Page Views - Use the slider to boost items which were frequently viewed by customers.
    • Item Purchase - Use the slider to boost items which were frequently purchased.

12. Click Finish.
    Result: The index has been created. You can additionally configure the additional index settings.