Search

The search content type creates a custom search bar that has many powerful search functions. It's perfect for customizing the search or filter needs of a specific section or website. This article will also suggest a few ways to optimize site search.

Finding the search content type can be a little tricky. When adding new content to a page, scroll down to the bottom of the content list types and choose Misc. After scrolling down on misc, Search will be towards the bottom of the list. Note that search can only be added to a page, but not created independently of a page. It can also be added as a module within a rich text editor. See the Rich Text feature guide on how to add a module.

Once selected, it is fairly straightforward to customize the actual text that comes with the search type.

Searching Types

There are a few different kinds of search bars that can be included on a page as shown below. This tutorial will briefly describe each one, and then go into more detail.

• Directory Search: This search will search for employees or students in a specified department or organization.
• Event Calendar: The event calendar search will be able to search through different events within a certain timeframe.
• Google Custom Search: Google search requires a custom web engine ID and is not often used (if at all) on the BYU site. The Site Search is recommended over the Google Custom Search.
• Site Search: Site search will filter through all content types and pages on a certain site or multiple sites and return the results according to the search criteria.

Directory Search

To set up the Directory Search, after selecting the search content type, scroll down and choose the magnifying glass icon neighboring the Search Action Page. Then in the bottom left, make sure the search type selected is Directory Search, and click New. Then, the search can be customized.

• Section: keeps the search parameters within certain bounds so the search doesn't pull too many results back. They are the tags for the site and only those people with associated tags will be available to view.
• Filters: By default, in this type of search, Brightspot will have the employee filter that will allow site editors to organize the search by all or certain departments. Multiple filters can be added to specify different things.
• Site Category Settings: allow the search bar to search through multiple sites that have similar traits as the current site (a list will be created by Brightspot, but this can be changed). By default it is none. However, it can be changed to all sites, some sites, or no sites to search through.

Event Calendar Search

All three of the Event Calendar searches are similar in what they do, they are just searching with different parameters of each other.

• Type: With the event search, Brightspot will use this new organizational filter called type. Type is going to be the content type that will be searched for. In this specific search, it will only be searching for event content types.
• Section: keep the search parameters within certain bounds so the search doesn't pull too many results back. These sections are the tags for the site and only events with associated tags will be available to view.
• Filters: further categorize what will be displayed on the search results and what will be taken out. Editors can customize this by tags, sections, events, dates, and more.
• Sorts: allow for the data, once pulled, to be organized more methodically instead of random results displayed.
• Site Category Settings:

  allow the search bar to search through multiple sites that have similar aspects as the current site. By default it is none. However, it can be changed to all sites, some sites, or no sites to search through.
  

Site Search

Similar to the site search options that have been shown above, Site Search will have options for everything explained above. Settings specific to the search need to be manually adjusted as Brightspot doesn't autofill settings.

• Types can sort the searches by type.
• Section will return content items only from certain sections.
• Filters will help filter search results by tags, sections, events, dates, and more.
• Sorts will help the data be organized once the search has finished returning all the data.

Add Search For a Dynamic List

Custom searches can be created for a dynamic list on a website.

1. To start, create a new Site Search.
2. Select a Section from the dropdown menu or the page after clicking on the magnifying glass.
3. Set the search settings to the desired results.
4. Next, open the selected Section's editor.
5. Under the Section Overrides tab, open the Header tab and select the newly created Search option from the dropdown. This allows the Section Search to appear as the designated search page instead of the inherited site search.

This process was also demonstrated in the July 2020 Recent Releases meeting.

Remove a Content Item From the Site Search

Sometimes, there are items within a section or filter criteria that shouldn't appear when users search on the website but should still exit within the website. In those cases, editors can follow the steps below to hide these content items from the search results.

1. Go to the Overrides tab in a content item's editor.
2. Go down to the Dynamic Results setting.
3. Flip switch for Hide from dynamic lists.
4. Go down to the Search setting on the same page. 
5. Flip switch for Hide from search results.

Switching on both options will make sure that the content item doesn't show up in a dynamic list and search results within the site. See the video training below on how to restrict more search and sharing settings.

Edit Settings for Search and Sharing

Search Optimization

When a website is filled with content items, it could be hard for users to get the best relevant results when they search for something on that website. Apart from decluttering the content on the website so that minimum results appear. There are two ways in which search can be optimized.

Dictionary

When a website contains information with specific jargon or professional terms, the search function might not be able to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information that contains the same jargon for different purposes. A dictionary helps to define some of these rules. One site can only have one dictionary tied to it, but a dictionary can be tied to multiple sites. Only site admins can add a term and modify or add a dictionary.

Adding a specific Term and its variants to a website defines what that term could be represented by the users as, and would command the search to return results including the term and its variants. A term would only apply to the website when it's added to the Dictionary tied to the website.

For example, when users are looking for financial aid information on Life Science's college website, they might type "loan" instead of "financial aid" directly in the search bar. Hence, pages with information on loans might show up instead of the main financial aid page. Adding the term "financial aid" to the website's dictionary and defining its variant to be "loan" will tell the site search that when users type in "loan," return pages about "financial aid."

Add a Term to a Website's Dictionary

1. Click on the hamburger menu in the upper left corner of the screen.
2. Open the Admin settings.
3. Then, click on Terms.
4. Choose New Term if the term doesn't exist yet.
5. Add primary phrase, variants (and misspellings) as desired.
6. Add the term to the desired dictionary by choosing from the Dictionary drop-down menu. Multiple dictionaries can be added.

Clicking on a dictionary within the Terms page will show all terms that belong to the dictionary.

Tie a Dictionary to a Website

1. Go to the sites and settings of the desired website
2. Search for the specific Site Search that would be using this dictionary in the top search bar.
3. Scroll down to Search Spotlight and choose the desired Dictionary from the list.
4. Only one dictionary can be linked to one site search.

Create Specific Summaries in Search Results

Another way to optimize search results is to create specific blurbs when a keyword is searched. The screenshot below is an example. When searching the word "access," the first result to come up is a blurb or summary of the most relevant pages from the website and links to those pages.

This has to be manually set up for every desired term or keyword that the search summary or blurb should appear for.

Set up Search Summary

1. Create a term following the steps above if the term hasn't been created.
2. Otherwise, click on the desired term and open settings for Search Spotlight.
3. Choose Promo.
4. Set Item to no link.
5. Title is the bolded heading for the summary.
6. Description is where links to a summarized list of relevant pages are added. There is no rule attached to what the description should look like, as long as it helps users find relevant information faster. The screenshot below is the setting for the example shown above.
7. Add a Promo image if desired.
8. Save.

Once the summary is set up, it will now show up first when the Term is searched on the website and all other results will follow. Note that a term is tied to a dictionary and a dictionary is tied to a specific site search. If the site search used on the page is not the one tied to the dictionary that has the term, the summary will not show up.