Tips for Tuning Solr Search: No Coding Required

Nick Veenhof Senior Search Engineer, Acquia

June 25, 2013

Welcome

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

Drupal Core Search

Cron.php Indexing process

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

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

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

Alternatives

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

Apache Solr Search Integration

Search API (+ Solr)

What is Solr?

•  Based on Lucene

•  Written in Java, needs Java container such as

Tomcat or Jetty

•  Separate Server

•  Mathematical Indexing

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.

Architecture

Webserver/Drupal

*SQL

Solr

GET (POST) search

POST index

DIY?

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

Careful…

•  No Security

•  High Availability is not trivial

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

Time for the demo!

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

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

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

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

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

Questions For more information visit:

http://www.acquia.com#

Contact us: sales@acquia.com or 888.9.ACQUIA#

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