Get results with Solr search

Faceted search can help people on your website find information. Faceted search works with keyword searches by providing the option of drilling down into categories. Offering pre-defined categories can help guide your website visitors in their search for information. Besides being able to drill down into categories faceted search also provides help with displaying more like this results and suggestions.

Drill down into categories - As a person searches and drills down into categories they are guided through content. This feedback whilst searching can help to make their search experience more rewarding. With each search result information can be provided about how the result fits into the overall scheme of things on the website.

An example of providing a drill down user experience would be where the person visiting searches on "plant" and the website returns results with the drill down options of "inside" or "outside". Then if "outside" is selected the drill down options of plant likes "shade" or "full sun" location in garden are presented. The result is that as the person visiting searches the website helps with providing options.

More like this results - More like this uses the displayed content to automatically query the Solr search engine to find other results with similar search values. The benefit of displaying more like this is that the person visiting can discover additional useful information.

Suggestions based on website content - Auto complete helps with search by providing suggestions to the visitor whilst they are typing their search query.

For more information about Solr visit http://wiki.apache.org/solr/

For a list of some websites that use Solr visit http://wiki.apache.org/solr/PublicServers

Next time you are searching consider what it is that helps you find what you are looking for. Solr search is worth considering where you have a requirement for search to help people find information quickly.