Understanding Query Execution in Optimizely Search & Navigation

A Real-Life Example of How Search Works Behind the Scenes

In today’s digital landscape, delivering accurate and relevant search results is critical to user experience. Optimizely Search & Navigation (formerly Episerver Find) offers a powerful search engine that enhances queries using features like synonyms, fuzzy matching, boosting, and best bets.

Let’s walk through how a search query is executed using a real-life example.

Real-Life Scenario

Imagine a user visits an e-commerce site and searches for:

"iphon" (a typo for "iPhone")

Despite the typo, the user expects to see relevant results like "iPhone 15 Pro", "Apple iPhone Case", etc. Here's how Optimizely processes this query:

Query Execution Flow

1️⃣ Synonym Expansion

Before the query hits the search engine, Optimizely checks for synonyms. If "iPhone" has synonyms like "smartphone" or "mobile", the query is expanded:

Query becomes: "iphon OR iPhone OR smartphone OR mobile"

This increases the chances of matching relevant content.

2️⃣ Fuzzy Matching

Next, fuzzy logic is applied to handle typos. The term "iphon" is recognized as a close match to "iPhone" using Levenshtein distance.

Match found: "iPhone" despite the typo.

3️⃣ Document Retrieval

The search engine now retrieves all documents that match the expanded and fuzzy-corrected query terms.

Results include: iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone Cases, Apple Accessories, etc.

4️⃣ Boosting

Boosting adjusts the relevance score of results. For example, if Apple products are boosted:

.BoostMatching(x => x.Brand, "Apple", 2.0)

Apple products appear higher in the results than others.

5️⃣ Best Bets

If the admin has configured a best bet for the term "iPhone", such as the "iPhone 15 Pro" product page, it is promoted to the top of the results.

Best Bet Result: iPhone 15 Pro appears first, regardless of score.

6️⃣ Final Results

The final result list is assembled, combining all the above enhancements and User sees accurate, relevant, and prioritized results:

• Synonym-expanded matches
• Fuzzy-corrected terms
• Boosted relevance scores
• Best bet promotions

This layered approach ensures that:

• Users get results even with typos.
• Related terms are intelligently matched.
• Important content is prioritized.
• Admins can manually promote key pages.

Summary Diagram

User Query → Synonym Expansion → Fuzzy Matching → Document Retrieval → Boosting → Best Bets → Final Results