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Data extractor

Manipulate your products data for better facets, merchandising and search relevance

Paulius Grigaitis avatar
Written by Paulius Grigaitis
Updated over 3 weeks ago

The Data Extractor feature allows you to extract data as custom fields and use these for facets, merchandising and optimising the search relevance.

What problem does it solve?

The data structure of merchants is often not optimized for Search, e.g.

  • Product attributes are stored in Tag1 or other fields together with other attributes;

  • Attribute values are provided as a string like Field:Value1,Value2 or "Value1,Value2";

  • Attribute values are provided as a JSON array like ["Value1", "Value2"]

This way, merchants are not able to use this data in facets, merchandising, and other areas. Nosto's data extractor feature allows to generate attributes as separate fields that can later be used in Search & Categories.

Use cases

  • Create more facets

  • Merchandise by various attributes e.g. promotion type

  • Add as Searchable Fields for better search relevance

  • Building custom frontend template elements

Usage Guidelines

  1. Decide which attributes you would like to extract into a separate data field

  2. Go to Catalog Explorer → Settings → Data Extractor

  3. Give the new extractor a specific naming e.g. Attributes from Tag1

  4. Select the type of your Data Extractor based on field's data structure

  5. Select a field where your desired attributes are placed now

  6. (If needed) Write a separator - a character that separates attribute’s name from the value

    1. e.g. if the attribute is Style:Oversized, then your separator is :

  7. It’s useful to extract more attributes to be available for you but you can also specify optional settings to extract something even more specific

    1. To extract only the Style attribute, set the Name Filter to Style.

    2. To exclude certain attribute values from extraction, use the Value Filter option. For example, if you do not want to extract the value Oversized, add it to the Value Filter list.

Once a new data extractor is created, new data fields will be available after the next re-index which happens 4 times a day. To know when it’s available and to use it in search, you should:

  1. Go to Search & Categories → Settings → Indexed Fields and add the new field, that you’ve created

  2. When it’s added, you should wait for another re-index

  3. Finally, your new attributes can be used in facets, merchandising, and searchable fields

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