Search

Helping people find things

Good search depends on the content, not only on the engine. Titles that describe what a page actually is, and descriptions written in the words a visitor would use, do more for findability than any setting. The description you write for a page is also what appears beneath it in the results.

Taking permissions in account

Permissions are respected throughout. A visitor only ever sees results they are allowed to open, and unpublished drafts stay out of public results until they are published.

Going further with Solr

For larger sites, search can be handed to Solr, a dedicated search engine that runs alongside the site. It copes better with a great deal of content, returns results faster, and more gracefully than a general-purpose index.

Solr also opens the door to newer approaches. With it in place, a site can offer search that answers a question in sentences, drawing on its own content to do so, rather than only handing back a list of links.