Search architecture

Commerce Search v3 introduces advanced search technologies tailored for ecommerce platforms, especially B2B environments enhancing product discovery, boosting conversions, and simplifying the buyer experience.

This version leverages AI and machine learning to understand user intent, optimize product rankings, and deliver highly relevant results even from broad or ambiguous queries. It also streamlines configuration and management, reducing technical overhead and integrating seamlessly with existing Optimizely products.

Commerce Search v3 routes Search APIs based on search intent.

This blended architecture optimizes both performance and cost-efficiency by leveraging AI exclusively for high-impact, relevancy-driven queries, while maintaining Elasticsearch for broader search coverage.

Learn more and see how to enable Commerce Search v3

By default, Optimizely Configured Commerce's Commerce Search v1 uses Elasticsearch version 5.5 (Nest version 5) for search functionality on customer storefronts. Commerce Search v2, which uses Elasticsearch version 7.10 (Nest version 7), is now available in Configured Commerce. This version extends third-party search abstraction, uses Shared Search pipelines, and improves performance, scalability, resilience, and efficiency. Optimizely recommends upgrading to this version. See Elasticsearch's release notes for more information.

Commerce Search v2 uses the third-party search abstractions and shared search pipelines. This exposes Optimizely partners to third-party search abstractions and helps simplify implementing custom or third-party search providers. It also adds the Dimensional Analyzer, which allows searching product sizes by fractional numbers.

Commerce Search v2's Search API returns sponsored search results differently from Commerce Search v1. Sponsored products show along with normal search results. For example, if the page setting is 8 results per page and there are 3 sponsored products, Commerce Search v1 shows 5 products and 3 sponsored results, whereas Commerce Search v2 returns 8 products and 3 sponsored results.

The Elasticsearch Index objects provide access to the search index using the NEST (Nest version 5 when using default Elasticsearch version 5.5 or Nest version 7 when using Elasticsearch version 7.10) IElasticClient interface. Elasticsearch uses the Search\_Url application setting. If the Search\_Url is blank, it returns an empty search index. If the Server\_Url has a valid location, Elasticsearch uses the connection alias to configure an IElasticClient that represents the index.

The Elasticsearch Index Builder builds the search index. The search index build method uses an IndexType to identify whether it is a category, content, or product build of the index.

New indices are built with the name of the Elasticsearch Index alias (typically the database name) and new GUID. This is important because building the index creates an alias, moves the old index to the new one, and deletes the old index.

The Elasticsearch Query Builder is a helper class for creating Elasticsearch NEST queries and filters. This helper class builds the queries for the search provider, which interrogates the search index for the search result.

Analyzers perform the analysis process on the specified text and return the text result.

Configured Commerce uses the following analyzers:

See https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/net-api/1.x/analyze.html for more information.

Document Types in Commerce Search are similar to class definitions in .NET. They have a name and properties definition called mapping. Configured Commerce uses three built-in types for products, categories, and CMS content.

For more information on how Elasticsearch defines and uses types and mappings, see Elasticsearch's guide on mapping.

Each Configured Commerce search type has an associated search indexer and search provider. The search indexer creates the document type record in the Elasticsearch index. The search provider queries the documents within the Elasticsearch index. These types also have an associated class definition and .NET class that defines the Elasticsearch mapping.

Configured Commerce uses three out-of-the-box token filters for Commerce Search. These include the stemmer, stop word, and synonym filters. Elasticsearch currently has over 30 token filters that you can use to extend the current out-of-the-box functionality.

See the Elasticsearch's index guide for more information.

Many configuration and setting related values are stored in the web browser local storage. This includes:

The searchHistory local storage object maintains a list of search queries used to populate the search history within the search feature. The searchHistory is stored as JSON.

The following is an example JSON object stored for the search history:

The productListSortType local storage object stores the value of the current product sort type. There are options to sort using the following sort types:

The productListViewName local storage object stores two values by default: list and grid. This handles which display method to use for viewing the search results or products.