1. Testing the Searches
1.1 The Match Option
Typically, Quicklaunch will give you search results that are based on both recency and relevancy. For any given user query, the engine will initially decide on what posts are relevant. It will then rank them based on the relevancy score. Recency will be factored in as well. The post which is the latest will rank higher if both the posts have nearly the same relevancy. Quicklaunch will utilize Board Match when it comes to search relevancy. This is a match option that tries to boost the search coverage. It does this by finding content that has a few terms matching the query. This is regardless of the word form and order. But you may want the match to be a little more limited. Then you can try other choices such as Phrase Match and Full-term Match.
1.2 Result Page and Autocomplete
By following the above steps, Quicklaunch must have been set up by now. If that is the case, you will be able to see our search result page and autocomplete. For autocomplete, you will get a thumbnail, description, and title by default. You may be using the cross-domain function. Then you will get the domain name as well. There is also a thumbnail with the search result. Quicklaunch will bring up thumbnails in your server and give it from there for free accounts. For paid users, Quicklaunch generates the thumbnails and hosts on its servers. CDN delivers them for enhanced user experience and website performance.
1.3 Filtering the Result Rankings
a) Custom sorting
Quicklaunch will also give you a custom sorting feature. You can easily do multi-field sorting with this feature. You may want to get the matching content ranked by popularity and then by recency. You can quickly do it in our interface, given that the date of the post and the popularity field are indexed.
b) Control the posts to show by a query
You may like to have an even greater quality of control over your search results. For a specific user query, you may want to bring a post to the very top of the search results. You can do this by adding the query as a tag to the post. Then, give the Tag field a higher weightage, such as 9 to 10. After that, lower the Title weight. You may not be able to find out what the second and third rank is. But it will permit you to bring forth a set of posts for a certain search query.
c) Field Weight
There are some instances where you may want to have more control over the ranking of the results. You may want the search engine to give more attention to the posts that do not focus on the description match but the title match. To solve this issue, Quicklaunch gives you a field weight control page. This is found under the settings menu. You can adjust the weight from there. You must choose 0 if you wish to ignore and 10 if you want to give it the highest weightage.
2. Search Results Analytics
2.1 Data Export
The dashboard of Quicklaunch only gives you the top 10 on every section of the analytics. You may want to get a larger list which may be up to 1,000. For that, click on the Export button. It will help you to download the report in CSV format.
2.2 Analytics Menu
Quicklaunch continuously tracks what your users are performing searches for. It also records the clicks on your site. Then, it gives you analytical reports. You can easily get access to your domain reports. Just login into the Quicklaunch admin area, choose your domain, and click on Analytics in the menu.
3. Further Customization
3.1 CSS Override
You may not be completely satisfied with these settings to configure the widgets. You can override the pre-set CSS rules for our widgets by using the CSS Override in the settings menu.
3.2 Result Page and Autocomplete Customization
Quicklaunch gives WYSIWYG config for both the result page and the autocomplete widgets. Quicklaunch provides a unique set of elements that can be utilized to configure the widgets.
4. Faceted Search
Faceted search is the clustering of search results or items into a few categories. This allows users to skip the entire search or dive into the search results in any field by any value. The facets also give the number of hits in the search that matches the category. The users can then apply some restrictions to the search results. Research has proven that faceted search gives more efficient informational support to users than any best-first search. These kinds of searches have become very useful in online information access systems. This is particularly true for site search and e-commerce. This is the reason why several of the big e-commerce websites already give this feature to their consumers.