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Area: Optimizely CMS
Applies to versions: 10 and higher
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Search

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Note: This documentation is for the preview version of the upcoming release of CMS 12/Commerce 14/Search & Navigation 14. Features included here might not be complete, and might be changed before becoming available in the public release. This documentation is provided for evaluation purposes only.

Optimizely's recommended search functionality is Optimizely Search & Navigation , which is a cloud-ready extension that lets you build advanced customized search features based on your content model. If you are using the Optimizely Digital Experience Platform (DXP), Optimizely Search & Navigation is automatically included in your installation, otherwise it requires a separate license.

For non-cloud environments, you can use basic query-based search features, based on the Lucene search engine. To use this search functionality, the NuGet packages EPiServer.Search.Cms and EPiServer.Search must be installed, see Installing and deploying Search Service.

Note: The Lucene search cannot be used for ASP.NET Core-based applications. 

Search in Optimizely Commerce also is based on Lucene, see Search in the Commerce Developer Guide for information.

Optimizely Search features

Optimizely Search has the features:

  • Global search
    Search across all content types such as pages, blocks, files, videos and images, product content in a Commerce product catalog, and community content. Built-in filtering limits the search results to the type of content.

Note: You do not get search results on content in blocks added in a content area in a template. Usually, this is not a problem because blocks are often used to promote content in a specific source page, which are found when performing the search.

  • Static facets
    Facets are a type of filtering or grouping, where you present groups (facets) of content to limit the search after getting the first query from the user. You can search on categories and content types, and define which category and type facets you want to filter.
  • Access-based search result filtering
    Search results are filtered by access rights, ensuring that users see only content to which they have access.
  • Pluggable search interface
    You can replace the built-in Lucene indexing with another index without changing the code on the client, which uses the same API when searching.
  • Instant search
    The most important related information appears as you type the search phrase, and becomes more specific as you type more characters.

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Last updated: Jul 02, 2021

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