Tips for Tuning Solr Search: No Coding Required

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Tips for Tuning Solr Search: No Coding Required Nick Veenhof Senior Search Engineer, Acquia June 25, 2013

description

Helping online visitors easily find what they’re looking for is key to a website’s success. In this webinar, you’ll learn how to improve search in ways that don’t require any coding or code changes. We’ll show you easy modifications to tune up the relevancy to more advanced topics, such as altering the display or configuring advanced facets. Acquia’s Senior Search Engineer, Nick Veenhof , will guide you step by step through improving the search functionality of a website, using an in-house version of an actual conference site. Some of the search topics we'll demonstrate include: • Clean faceted URL’s • Adding sliders, checkboxes, sorting and more to your facets • Complete customization of your search displays using Display Suite • Tuning relevancy by using Solr optimizations This webinar will make use of the Facet API module suite in combination with the Apache Solr Search Integration module suite. We'll also use some generic modules to improve the search results that are independent of the search technology that is used. All of the examples shown are fully supported by Acquia Search.

Transcript of Tips for Tuning Solr Search: No Coding Required

Page 1: Tips for Tuning Solr Search: No Coding Required

Tips for Tuning Solr Search: No Coding Required

Nick Veenhof Senior Search Engineer, Acquia

June 25, 2013

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Welcome

Nick Veenhof Senior Search Engineer at Acquia @Nick_vh http://nickveenhof.be

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Drupal Core Search

Cron.php Indexing process

Interval defines how often updated content is being processed and sent to the index.

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Drupal Core Search

•  HTML Tag Scores •  <H1> = 25 •  <H2> = 18

•  Accent Removal •  Montréal => Montreal

•  Stemming •  skips, skipping = skip

Tip: Use porterstemmer to improve stemming in Drupal Core Search

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Drupal Core Search

•  SQL Not optimized for full text search

•  Limited Operators •  Slow and not scalable enough •  Stemming needs to happen in the

PHP side, not optimized •  Dead ends

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Alternatives

•  Google Custom Search •  Fuzzy Search •  Elasticsearch •  Google Search Appliance

Apache Solr Search Integration

Search API (+ Solr)

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What is Solr?

•  Based on Lucene

•  Written in Java, needs Java container such as

Tomcat or Jetty

•  Separate Server

•  Mathematical Indexing

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What is Solr?

•  Fast!

•  Replication / Solr Cloud

•  Multiple indexes (Multicore)

•  Which version to choose?

•  3.6.2 is very stable and proven to work with all

modules

•  4.3.1 If you want to be brave.

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Architecture

Webserver/Drupal

*SQL

Solr

GET (POST) search

POST index

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DIY?

https://www.acquia.com/blog/simple-guide-install-apache-solr-3x-drupal-7

Careful…

•  No Security

•  High Availability is not trivial

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Drupal Modules Apache Solr & Search API

In Common •  Search pages

•  Solr Search

•  Facet API

•  Autocomplete

•  Attachments

•  Sorting

•  Solr Configs!

Differences •  Architected for multisite

•  Architected for large-scale

sites

•  Optimized for Solr and ���

fault-tolerant

•  Location based Search

•  Views based

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Time for the demo!

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Modules Used in Demo •  Apache Solr as your base set –

•  Takes care of your search pages and spelling suggestions.

•  Provides you with options to add suggestion blocks to your node pages,

referred to as “More Like This”.

•  drupal.org/project/apachesolr

•  Auto-Complete your Search Query-

•  Autocomplete also has the spelling corrections and it also shows the number

of results to your search query

•  drupal.org/project/apachesolr_autocomplete

Demo powered by Acquia Free Tier

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Modules Used in Demo (Contd.) •  Facets – •  Adding some facets surely improves the transparency of your content and

allows for easier filtering of content to search through. •  You can enable options to get links or checkboxes •  drupal.org/projects/facetapi

•  Tagclouds – •  a list of keywords that relate to the current context using bigger fonts to

convey higher emphasis for particular keywords •  drupal.org/projects/facetapi_tagcloud

•  Slider Module •  Make your numeric facets slide •  drupal.org/projects/facetapi_slider

Demo powered by Acquia Free Tier

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Modules Used in Demo (Contd.) •  Allow your facet blocks to be collapsible -

•  drupal.org/projects/facetapi_collapsible

•  Data ranges to selected more recently created content -

•  drupal.org/project/date_facets

•  Modify the options you give customers to sort the returned data –

•  drupal.org/project/apachesolr_sort

Demo powered by Acquia Free Tier

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Modules Used in Demo (Contd.) •  Please your users by having improved relevancy and boost more closely matched

relevancy tuning

•  drupal.org/project/apachesolr_proximity

•  Get Richer search snippets similar to the Google search results using RDFa and

Schema.org data.

•  drupal.org/project/rich_snippets

Demo powered by Acquia Free Tier

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Modules Used in Demo (Contd.) •  Fully customize your snippet displays by using the Display Suite search result

support

•  drupal.org/project/ds

•  Search in documents and files such as pdf, docx, … when attached to a node.

•  drupal.org/project/apachesolr_attachments

•  Make the facet urls more readable and “pretty”

•  drupal.org/project/facetapi_pretty_paths

Demo powered by Acquia Free Tier

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Questions For more information visit:

http://www.acquia.com#

Contact us: [email protected] or 888.9.ACQUIA#

Follow us: @acquia###

Today’s webinar recording will be posted to:#http://acquia.com/resources/recorded_webinars#