The Universal Search Solutions

The universal search has been having its comeback in recent years, especially for complex organizations with disjointed web properties and business applications. While a great deal of Information Architecture work is involved in the search implementation or search upgrade projects, a good IA is worth nothing without technical implementation. The one-size-fits-all search functionality in the CMS might not support the specific user needs.

Here are some of the solutions that I’ve worked with or would like to in the future (and by the way, I’m not incentivized to endorse any of them):

1. Coveo.com integrates with many popular systems, but with the SymSoft Solutions team, we mostly used it with Sitecore, most famously on a navigation-less website for the California Public Utilities Commission. Coveo Search does everything you expect it to and has pretty solid tech support.
2. ElasticPress.io is an enterprise-level version of 10up’s free ElasticPress WordPress plugin. Here is simple instruction on how to index multiple sites in a multisite scenario https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/wordpress/integrating-elasticsearch-with-wordpress-using-elasticpress/
3. squiz.net/search was introduced to me by Jeff Dillon in a recent CMS Experts group in Sacramento. Squiz features interesting user experience functionality such as separate interfaces for content types and other facets, search bookmarks, and search history. See a comprehensive demo at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9ZMnPQ8Oaw. I’m looking forward to trying it in a future project.

Of course, integrating such robust solutions while retaining high web performance scores is what separates a genuinely delightful from a good-enough user experience.