Nosto’s Search engine finds search results by matching user queries to the product data defined in Searchable Fields (Search → Settings). As soon as the product data is initially indexed in the Nosto Product Intelligence and the Search module is enabled, you can start setting up Searchable Fields and their priorities. Your onboarding manager will help you to find the best solution based on our experience and your individual business logic.
Best Practice:
Basic searchable fields: product name/title, category/product type, brand, important attributes (e.g. color)
Searchable fields should only contain data fields with concise information (no long product descriptions, SEO descriptions, etc.)
Define high priority for max. 5 different fields to be able to emphasize their importance
Don't use more than 10 different searchable fields as this might lead to a lot of unspecific results due to false matches
Nosto’s search engine constantly processes product data in a backend by optimizing, cleaning, and ensuring search relevance.
Moreover, on a query time, Nosto’s search engine enables advanced AI algorithms to maximize search relevance. Various Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms are used to understand the user’s intent. One example would be a stemming algorithm to understand that words with the same stem have the same meaning (e.g., knife - knives, deportivos - de deporte) or a compound words algorithm, e.g., damenjacken - jacken für damen. This makes your search intelligent and automated without a need to teach or configure the search engine’s logic.
Finally, on a query base, the search engine applies optional merchandising and personalization to ensure that search results are relevant and ranked by business needs.
Learn more about search, merchandising and personalisation here.
Learn more about how to use score insights to understand how to analyse and optimise the sorting of product listings here.