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Search pages

Visitors use site search pages to search for content on your site. You can include filters, sorts, and other standard features in your site-search pages, and even have different search pages for different sites.

Site search pages are also where you can turn on search spotlights, which automatically highlight assets of your choosing according to terms and dictionaries that you configure. For information, see Dictionaries, terms, and spotlights.

For a wire frame example of what this content type can look like on your site, see Site search page design.

Standard search page fields​

While different search pages serve different purposes, they often contain the same configuration fields. See the table below for information on these fields.

FieldDescription
TitleEnter a title. The title is visible to the visitors to your site.
DescriptionEnter a description that describes this asset. This description is visible to the visitors to your site.
Results Per PageEnter the desired number of search results per page. Previous and next buttons are available to page through the results.
TypesSelect the content types that Brightspot will return when search queries are made.
User Displayed FiltersSelect the types of search filters available for visitors on your site, such as date published or content type. Visitors see checkboxes next to each filter in your site search. For details, see Setting the user displayed filters for site search.
SortingSelect the fields by which visitors can sort the search results. If you specify sorting, Brightspot does not apply boosts.
Filtering RulesSelect the rules by which Brightspot filters the search results. These filtering rules are not visible to visitors to your site.
Boost ConfigurationSet the criteria and matching weights for ensuring certain assets appear toward the top of the search results.

Select Standard or Custom.
- Standard is the pre-defined set of boosts that are applied to your site search page.
- Custom lists the standard boosts and allows you to modify them.

See Understanding relevance and boosting and Search boost types for more information.
Stop WordsEnter a list of words that do not count toward search results.

Site search page​

To create a site search:

  1. In the header, click .
  2. From the Create list, select Site Search Page.
  3. Using the following table as a reference, fill out the fields to create a site search page.
  4. Complete your site’s workflow and publish the site search.

Site search pages have all standard search page fields on the Main tab.

Asset search pages​

You can configure an asset search page that is tailored for returning certain digital assets, like attachment files, documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. The asset search page is separate from the standard Brightspot search, and includes fields that are specific to searching for digital assets.

To create an asset search page:

  1. In the header, click .
  2. From the Create list, select Asset Search Page.
  3. Using the following table as a reference, complete the fields as needed.
  4. Click Save.

Asset search pages have all standard search page fields on the Main tab.

Product search pages​

You can configure a product search page that is tailored for returning product search results. The product search page is separate from the standard Brightspot search, and includes fields that are specific to searching for products.

To create a product search page:

  1. In the header, click .
  2. From the Create list, select Product Search Page.
  3. Using the following table as a reference, complete the fields as needed.
  4. Click Save.

Product search pages have all standard search page fields on the Main tab.

Relevance and boosting​

When a visitor searches your site for content, the number of items returned may be in the thousands. Visitors can sort the results by relevance, which orders the results by best match to the search criteria.

Boosting is a plugin. See [CMS search boost][admin/plugins/cms-search-boost.md] for more information.

Creating a stop-word list​

Stop words are common words that you want to exclude from searches. For example, suppose you enter the following search phrase:

Dog trainers who are really smart and who are close to me

The words who, and, are, to, and me are extremely common and do not help to distinguish one search result from another. When performing a search, Brightspot can remove those words from the phrase and then search for the following:

Dog trainers really smart close

Removing stop words also improves relevance. An item with a lot of stop words, such as and and or, may seem very relevant compared to another item that uses less of such words—even though the actual content may be less relevant.

To create or modify a stop-words list:

  1. Search for and open your site’s site search.
  2. From the Stop Words selection field, select Create New. A New Stop Words widget appears.
  3. In the Name field, type a name for the stop-words list.
  4. Under Stop Words, add new stop words, or click to remove existing ones.
  5. Click Save.

This topic covers how to exclude an asset from site searches in Brightspot.

To exclude an asset from site searches:

  1. Search for and open the item on the content edit page.
  2. Toward the right of the widget, select > Overrides. The Overrides widget appears.
  3. Under Advanced, turn on Exclude From Search Results.
  4. Complete your site's workflow and publish the item.

Setting user displayed filters​

When setting up your site search page, you can specify which filters are visible to your visitors by configuring the User Displayed Filters field. This can be useful in cases where you want to make sure visitors to your site are searching for information relevant to them. Visitors may not need to search for tags, but do need to be able to search for sections. By using this field, you can specify which filters are available on site search and which are not.

To set the user displayed filters:

  1. Complete the steps outlined in Site search page.

  2. Click Add in the User Displayed Filters field, and select the type of filters you would like to make available to visitors of this site search page.

  3. For each filter selected, do the following:

    1. The Heading of the selected type defaults to the type name. You can override this with your own text if needed.

    2. Expand the Include <selected type> field and make a selection from the following choices:

      Note

      The name of this field varies based on the type of filter you select. For example, if you select to include sections as a User Displayed Filter, this field will be named Include Sections.

      • All—Includes all available items in the User Displayed Filters on the site search page.
      • All, Except—Includes all available items in the User Displayed Filters on the site search page, except the ones you select. Click Add Item to select the items to exclude.
      • Some—Allows you to specify which items to include in the User Displayed Filters on the site search page. Click Add Item to select the items to include.

    3. To select one or more of the filters by default for your visitors:

      1. Click Add Item in the Default Values field.
      2. Add all of the items to be selected by default for your visitors on the site search page.
    Note

    In the image above, you see sections were selected as a User Displayed Filter. The Heading was changed to Top Sections, from the default Sections. Two of the available sections have been included (BSP_Culture and BSP_Benefits), with BSP_Benefits being selected in the Default Values field (so it is checked by default on the site search page). Looking at the preview to the right of the field form, you see both Benefits and Culture listed under Top Sections and Benefits is selected by default.

  4. Complete your site's workflow and publish the asset.