How to Leverage Search as a Service for Enhanced Results
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 3:13 am
What is the first thing you do when you need to know, understand, or buy something? You Google it (or you ask ChatGPT). Google.com gets over 85 billion visits every month.
However, Google is just the tipping point of our online search behavior. Today, whether you’re in your local files folder, buying a pair of headphones on an e-commerce site, or going through a spreadsheet of 100s of rows, search is the natural user behavior.
In response to this burgeoning need, the concept of search-as-a-service has emerged. This blog post walks you through what it is, how it works, and ways in which you can use it in your business.
‘Search as a Service’ in 60 Seconds
Search-as-a-service is a software-as-a-service offering that allows you to integrate search functionality into any digital product, such as websites, blogs, e-commerce platforms, etc.
The search provider will take care of data indexing, query handling, results, relevance, ranking, and updates. They will also take responsibility for data security, privacy, and compliance.
Search-as-a-service benefits enterprises and small businesses alike by offering every russia telemarketing data digital product the most powerful feature without the burdens of building it in-house.
To integrate search-as-a-service into your digital tools:
Choose the right provider for your needs
Set up and integrate the search-as-a-service tool
Customize the search experience
Consider AI-based search
Test search results
Monitor and improve for optimized search
What is Search-as-a-Service?
Search-as-a-service is a cloud-based solution that enables businesses to integrate powerful search functionalities into their applications without needing to build and maintain the infrastructure in-house.
Essentially, you can plug an external piece of software into your systems and allow your users to search through your data.
For example, let’s say you have an e-commerce website. You already have data about product names, descriptions, prices, related products, etc. Using search as a service, you can integrate a third-party solution to let your customers search for what they want.
Why search-as-a-service matters
Building a robust search engine is not easy. It involves complex processes of crawling, tagging, indexing, ranking, personalizing, and delivering search results. Building something like this can be intense, expensive, and time-consuming.
Yet, internal search within a website is one of the pillars of good customer experience. The sooner the customer finds what they are looking for, the more likely they will buy it. The sooner an employee finds the information they need, the more productive they’ll be.
Search-as-a-service solution reconciles the two. It gives organizations the opportunity to give their products the most powerful feature without actually building it in-house!
We discuss more of the advantages of the search-as-a-service offering later in this blog post.
Search as a service vs. traditional search solutions
Before we get into search-as-a-service in detail, let’s see how it compares to traditional search solutions.
Traditionally, organizations built and implemented the search bar into products. For instance, like you’d build the checkout flow for your e-commerce site, you’d also code the search. This brought with it several challenges that can be effectively overcome with search-as-a-service.
Parameter Traditional search solutions Search-as-a-Service
Development Designed, developed, and implemented in-house Plug-and-play subscription to the service
Speed Takes a bit of development and infrastructure setup time Quick integration with minimal setup
Scalability Needs manual scaling and resource management Automatically adjusts to increasing demand
Cost High upfront costs for infrastructure Pay-as-you-go pricing, no upfront hardware costs
Maintenance Ongoing internal maintenance and updates required Managed by the service provider, minimal upkeep
Advanced features Any new feature requires additional development Service provider adds AI, machine learning, etc. to remain competitive
Performance Possible performance issues with high traffic or complex queries Optimized for speed and reliability
Differences between traditional search solutions and search-as-as-service
How Search as a Service Works
We’ve seen that search-as-a-service is distinct from the traditional models that organizations have used so far. But how does it really work?
At its core, search-as-a-service is an external app that you integrate into your website, app, e-commerce platform, internal employee engagement systems, etc. It is just like integrating GMail/Apple/X for authentication or a generative AI implementation.
Once you integrate everything, here is everything search-as-a-service will do:
Data indexing: At first, the app would index the data, i.e., gather and organize the information that would be searched, whether it’s products in an online store, blog posts, or customer reviews—into a searchable index. Traditionally, this used to be a business database function.
Query handling: When a user enters a search query, the service executes request processing, indexing, information retrieval, and ranking based on relevance.
Search execution: And then, the service displays search results that are most relevant to the query.
For example, if you search for “wireless headphones” on an e-commerce site, you’ll see the most relevant items. If “noise-canceling” is a popular feature, the search service might prioritize products with that attribute.
Relevance and ranking: Over time, as more users interact, the engine learns to refine the ranking for relevance, making it more intuitive and accurate. On Spotify, if you type in “jazz,” the search results will not just display the most relevant jazz albums but also those you’re most likely to enjoy based on your listening history.
Real-time updates: Whenever new content is added, or existing content is updated, the search engine automatically reflects these changes in search results. This ensures that users always see up-to-date information without requiring manual intervention.
All right, so an external tool helps users ‘search’? Yes. What else?
Key Features of Search as a Service
The simple word ‘search,’ in the context of digital experiences, hides within it a wide range of powerful technology. Here are some key features.
Customizability: Search-as-a-service allows you to customize what results you display to the user. You can rank your search results based on relevance, user preference, and product availability.
You can also set it up in such a way that sponsored results appear at the top. This flexibility ensures that users see the most pertinent results first, improving engagement and conversion rates.
Personalization: A good search-as-a-service product will offer personalized search results based on the data you have, such as past purchases, search history, preferences, etc. You might also have dynamic results, like outlets closest to the user’s location.
Faceted search: This feature allows users to filter results to quickly find what they want.
For instance, if you search for planner on an e-commerce website, it will allow you to filter for dated/undated, hardbound/softcover/ring-bound/, ruled/dotted pages, and so on and so forth.
Multilingual support: Modern search-as-a-service tools can also handle multilingual queries, enabling you to cater to a global audience without investing in separate language-specific search engines.
Multiple source search: Good search-as-a-service tools allow you to integrate multiple sources of data. For instance, if you use search-as-a-service for your internal employee platform, you can integrate their calendars, Google Drive, project management tools, ticketing systems, knowledge base, etc.
(instead of forcing users to choose the exact word in the indexed data). They also have a more contextual understanding of data from various sources.
However, Google is just the tipping point of our online search behavior. Today, whether you’re in your local files folder, buying a pair of headphones on an e-commerce site, or going through a spreadsheet of 100s of rows, search is the natural user behavior.
In response to this burgeoning need, the concept of search-as-a-service has emerged. This blog post walks you through what it is, how it works, and ways in which you can use it in your business.
‘Search as a Service’ in 60 Seconds
Search-as-a-service is a software-as-a-service offering that allows you to integrate search functionality into any digital product, such as websites, blogs, e-commerce platforms, etc.
The search provider will take care of data indexing, query handling, results, relevance, ranking, and updates. They will also take responsibility for data security, privacy, and compliance.
Search-as-a-service benefits enterprises and small businesses alike by offering every russia telemarketing data digital product the most powerful feature without the burdens of building it in-house.
To integrate search-as-a-service into your digital tools:
Choose the right provider for your needs
Set up and integrate the search-as-a-service tool
Customize the search experience
Consider AI-based search
Test search results
Monitor and improve for optimized search
What is Search-as-a-Service?
Search-as-a-service is a cloud-based solution that enables businesses to integrate powerful search functionalities into their applications without needing to build and maintain the infrastructure in-house.
Essentially, you can plug an external piece of software into your systems and allow your users to search through your data.
For example, let’s say you have an e-commerce website. You already have data about product names, descriptions, prices, related products, etc. Using search as a service, you can integrate a third-party solution to let your customers search for what they want.
Why search-as-a-service matters
Building a robust search engine is not easy. It involves complex processes of crawling, tagging, indexing, ranking, personalizing, and delivering search results. Building something like this can be intense, expensive, and time-consuming.
Yet, internal search within a website is one of the pillars of good customer experience. The sooner the customer finds what they are looking for, the more likely they will buy it. The sooner an employee finds the information they need, the more productive they’ll be.
Search-as-a-service solution reconciles the two. It gives organizations the opportunity to give their products the most powerful feature without actually building it in-house!
We discuss more of the advantages of the search-as-a-service offering later in this blog post.
Search as a service vs. traditional search solutions
Before we get into search-as-a-service in detail, let’s see how it compares to traditional search solutions.
Traditionally, organizations built and implemented the search bar into products. For instance, like you’d build the checkout flow for your e-commerce site, you’d also code the search. This brought with it several challenges that can be effectively overcome with search-as-a-service.
Parameter Traditional search solutions Search-as-a-Service
Development Designed, developed, and implemented in-house Plug-and-play subscription to the service
Speed Takes a bit of development and infrastructure setup time Quick integration with minimal setup
Scalability Needs manual scaling and resource management Automatically adjusts to increasing demand
Cost High upfront costs for infrastructure Pay-as-you-go pricing, no upfront hardware costs
Maintenance Ongoing internal maintenance and updates required Managed by the service provider, minimal upkeep
Advanced features Any new feature requires additional development Service provider adds AI, machine learning, etc. to remain competitive
Performance Possible performance issues with high traffic or complex queries Optimized for speed and reliability
Differences between traditional search solutions and search-as-as-service
How Search as a Service Works
We’ve seen that search-as-a-service is distinct from the traditional models that organizations have used so far. But how does it really work?
At its core, search-as-a-service is an external app that you integrate into your website, app, e-commerce platform, internal employee engagement systems, etc. It is just like integrating GMail/Apple/X for authentication or a generative AI implementation.
Once you integrate everything, here is everything search-as-a-service will do:
Data indexing: At first, the app would index the data, i.e., gather and organize the information that would be searched, whether it’s products in an online store, blog posts, or customer reviews—into a searchable index. Traditionally, this used to be a business database function.
Query handling: When a user enters a search query, the service executes request processing, indexing, information retrieval, and ranking based on relevance.
Search execution: And then, the service displays search results that are most relevant to the query.
For example, if you search for “wireless headphones” on an e-commerce site, you’ll see the most relevant items. If “noise-canceling” is a popular feature, the search service might prioritize products with that attribute.
Relevance and ranking: Over time, as more users interact, the engine learns to refine the ranking for relevance, making it more intuitive and accurate. On Spotify, if you type in “jazz,” the search results will not just display the most relevant jazz albums but also those you’re most likely to enjoy based on your listening history.
Real-time updates: Whenever new content is added, or existing content is updated, the search engine automatically reflects these changes in search results. This ensures that users always see up-to-date information without requiring manual intervention.
All right, so an external tool helps users ‘search’? Yes. What else?
Key Features of Search as a Service
The simple word ‘search,’ in the context of digital experiences, hides within it a wide range of powerful technology. Here are some key features.
Customizability: Search-as-a-service allows you to customize what results you display to the user. You can rank your search results based on relevance, user preference, and product availability.
You can also set it up in such a way that sponsored results appear at the top. This flexibility ensures that users see the most pertinent results first, improving engagement and conversion rates.
Personalization: A good search-as-a-service product will offer personalized search results based on the data you have, such as past purchases, search history, preferences, etc. You might also have dynamic results, like outlets closest to the user’s location.
Faceted search: This feature allows users to filter results to quickly find what they want.
For instance, if you search for planner on an e-commerce website, it will allow you to filter for dated/undated, hardbound/softcover/ring-bound/, ruled/dotted pages, and so on and so forth.
Multilingual support: Modern search-as-a-service tools can also handle multilingual queries, enabling you to cater to a global audience without investing in separate language-specific search engines.
Multiple source search: Good search-as-a-service tools allow you to integrate multiple sources of data. For instance, if you use search-as-a-service for your internal employee platform, you can integrate their calendars, Google Drive, project management tools, ticketing systems, knowledge base, etc.
(instead of forcing users to choose the exact word in the indexed data). They also have a more contextual understanding of data from various sources.