This section includes the following topics:
Note: A search interface does not define or control the user interface through which shoppers search for product data in the storefront.
Understand how searches are narrowed
A search interface narrows the scope of shoppers’ searches to specified index fields in your published product data. A search interface does this by specifying:
The dimensions whose dimension values will be examined as possible matches with the shopper’s search term.
The properties that will be examined as possible matches with the shopper’s search term.
Note: The dimensions and properties contained by a search interface are known as its members. Searches ignore dimensions and properties that are not members of a search interface.
The dimensions and properties correspond to catalog fields. When catalog content is published:
Product fields that the merchandiser marked as Facet become dimensions.
Product fields that the merchandiser did not mark as Facet become properties.
Product category fields such as “Shirts”, “Dresses”, “Skirts” become dimension values.
Product records (SKUs) grouped under a product category are tagged to the corresponding dimension value.
After a storefront shopper enters a search term, the search results include product data records that:
Have a property whose value matches the shopper’s search term, and/or
Are tagged to dimension values that match the shopper’s search term. The dimension values must be in dimensions that are members of the search interface.
Note: You can create any number of search interfaces. You can select the search interface to use with your application on the Search tab of the Oracle Commerce Cloud Service. You can use the default search interface, named All, as the starting point of your own search interfaces, by modifying or copying it.
Example: the search interface All
Suppose that the search interface All includes:
A property named
product.short_descA dimension named
product.category
If a storefront shopper performs a search on the term “backpacks”, the search results contain:
Records with a
product.short_descproperty whose value matches the search term (“backpacks”); for example, a record whoseproduct.short_descproperty is set to “SLR Camera/Laptop Backpack”.and/or
Records tagged to dimension values in the dimension
product.categorythat match the search term (“backpacks”); for example, a record tagged to the dimension value “camera backpacks and cases” in the dimensionproduct.category.
Note: See the following section for information about how search terms are matched to properties and dimensions.
Understand how search terms are matched to records
You can configure how search terms are matched to records by specifying:
Whether parts of a search term can be individually matched with different members.
Whether partial query matches are supported.
For detailed information, see Search interface attributes.
Understand how the fields array affects the sorting of search results
The order of records in search results is determined by your relevance ranking strategy. A relevance ranking strategy is composed of individual modules, each of which sorts records according to its own criteria. However, modules in your relevance ranking strategy can take into account the order of the members in the fields array of your search interface. For information about how they do this, see Understand how relevance ranking modules sort results.
The position of the member ecr:crossField in the fields array determines the position in the search results of records that are added to the list as a result of cross-field matches. The member ecr:crossField is taken into account only when the crossFieldMatch attribute is set to always.
