How , When , What, Where Adobe Search And Promote

This page contains details of flow of Adobe Search & Promote. 

Adobe Search & Promote is one of the leaders in websites Product & Content Searches. How it is different from other technologies is the way we can do customization in search. We can use one of the best feature available in market called promote.

The major aim of any search migration project are given below,

a)    Migration of legacy search system to Search & Promote platform.
b)    Return more relevant results
c)    Use customer-supplied metrics to rank search results

So the flow happens as given below.

•    Create new Search & Promote account for the team.
•    Define metadata schema & configure the URL entry points/ index connector.
•    Using report widgets to see data populated by verifying all results are indexed, verifying all results are returned in the data view & verify that keyword searches are returning best results as offered by S&P.
•    Designing search result pages
•    Facet based search implementation.
•    Implement Sort, facet, breadcrumb, pagination etc.
•    implement best way of navigation by making it easy for users to navigate results using nested facets.
•    More details on content search (data views, sort etc) and transport layer.
•    The output can be configured to deliver HTML or XML as requested by clients.
•    We can do ranking of results based on metrics on previous searches.

Extra Notes:

•    Debug any issues with the search functionality using debug options available and also through analyzing the transport layer output.
•    Then using business rules, direct hits we can display promotional content, such as banners, depending on specific search contexts.

We recommend adobe search & promote for any product/content search in any type of website. If you need assistance, contact Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/in/products/searchandpromote.html

Search and Promote to Adobe Target

Adobe has moved from Search to Search driven merchandising.

Adobe Target suggests merchandise and offers based on user search pages and search terms they have used. Adobe Target makes it easy to promote the right content to- best way of customization.
The implementation method and tool of target looks almost same as Adobe Search and Promote.

How the new search different from Search and promote?

 Test & Target is an improved version of Adobe Search and Promote, which helps users to test various search experiences, marketing products, or analyzing results pages mutually to determine the highest performers. Test & Target also facilitates the targeting of search results or pages to visitors based on past purchase data or prior category preferences. Target can also be easily incorporated into search results to provide product or content recommendations related to visitors’ searches.

 Adobe Target Features

Site Search Options

Vast amount of options like did you mean, dynamic image rendition, decision making refinements etc

Customized Display

based on algorithm target customize the top offering, most popular, highest rated etc.

Search intent
Brilliantly understands the user search based on linguistics, business rules etc to cater high quality results

Metrics based relevance

Based on the rules set, search items are ordered and placed on top so that the relevancy can be high

Analytics integration

Adobe analytics integrated with target helps to capture the search data for customers

Targeted promotions

Promotional items like videos, banner can be set on search results

Update; Adobe Search & Promote is now Adobe Target

How to debug issues with S&P?

S&P - Debugging issues:

How can we find Run log for S&P:
We can check process of S&P by appending URL as : /q=xxx&gsdo=searchpaths&gsdb=runlog&gsdblog=3

Search and promote Simulator in Browser without login:
just append the gscmc=1 parameter in the stage URL. That will load the simulator in the browser instead of login in S&P.

Analyse category or any complicate errors from page:
Add '&gsdb=searchpaths to the staged/live URL with query. Then 'view source' and look for the default search we can find more details.

Index logs

Majority of the indexing issues are published in index logs and by analysing it, we can resolve many of them.

Can we debug transport layer of S&P?

We can get the data passed from JSON layer to presentation layer by previewing the data. On template we need to select preview option to see the data output.

How to check syntax written in a temlate?
We have guided tags to create S&P output. While writing those, ust enable 'check syntax error' on template options. By doing this temlate throws error on save, when there is a syntax error.

Update; Adobe Search & Promote is now Adobe Target

Comparison between XML Vs HTML Vs JSON as Search And Promote output

There are many ways too display the Search And Promote outputs. Some clients asks for XML, some may ask JSON and some wants HTML.Let us see what are all the pros and cons of all these outputs? When we decided to go for S&P which format output we can go for.

Advantages of XML:

1. XML gives greater flexibility to display the results.
2. It is decoupled from presentation layer with more readabilty.
3. HTML look and feel can be changed any time without modifying the XML layer.
4. Same XML output feed can be used for mobile or desktop websites. No dependency on it during implementation.
5. Less size, more oriented with tags.
6. Webapp get more flexibility, to include any extra information or to restrict some data from users based on location or anything etc.

Extra changes will need to be made in the webapp to transform XML to HTML

Advantages of HTML:

1. Everything is ready with the output. 
2. Website owners need not work on further development because already the output is in html form.

But any change in UI can be an additional task in future.

Advantages of JSON:

1. Lightweight, more readable.
2. No xml tags.

Encoding from JSON to html can be a tedious task in the first time. 

In case of multi nested facets, it could be tedious to iterate through the deeper facets.

Update; Adobe Search & Promote is now Adobe Target

Wordpress Vs Adobe Search And Promote

People usually ask questions about various CMS integration with Search & Promote. Our answer is any

CMS can be integrated with Adobe Search And Promote. As we explained in previous posts, for any content/product website we can implement search and promote.

If it is a content website, we need to feed the url entry point to search and promote. Also we need to ensure the metadata defined in each page which will be used to map in S&P for better results. Since this is a necessary step for SEO we hope all websites must hold good with this theory.

If it is a product website, create product XML/text feed and feed it to search and promote.

The display logic(S&P output) is one option where in website owners can take better decision on. There can be XML, JSON or HTML outputs. Switiching between output forms after the mplementation gives overhead. So before starting with implementation, one has to decide on the output format.

Search and promote does not depend on any of the CMS / technologies involved in creating a website. Adobe made search and promote totally independent which makes the product unique.

How the CQ handles dynamic facets?

There are cases website uses dynamic facets. These facets appear based on search results. CQ has unique techniques to implement the dynamic facets. CQ also provides slot based facets & facet rails for grouping of websites.

We will be discussing on these features in coming posts.
Update; Adobe Search & Promote is now Adobe Target