Fredhopper Suggest FAQ

This page provides answers to frequently asked questions regarding Fredhopper Suggest.

Fredhopper Suggest is a separate module which is offered in addition to the standard Fredhopper setup. It uses its own data and is queried independently from Fredhopper Search. Fredhopper Suggest will only connect to the Fredhopper standard deployment to establish the number of results that each term will lead to. Further, no connection exists between the two systems.

What is the maximum number of suggestions that can be loaded into Fredhopper Suggest?

The capacity of Fredhopper Suggest is limited by the amount of available memory. Generally speaking: one needs at least twice the size of the uncompressed Suggest index allocated for Suggest.

 

Why is the number of results in Fredhopper Suggest sometimes not equal to the number of results shown in the actual search?

Fredhopper Suggest is not directly accessing Fredhopper to determine the current search results but is rather caching the number of results per search term and updating that number from time to time.
If you frequently update your Fredhopper instance with attributes that affect the search result it is possible that the Fredhopper Suggest is still caching an older number. The frequency of updates can be controlled in the configuration (see Step 4 - Configure Fredhopper Suggest) and is per default set to refresh one search term every 15 seconds. Please be aware that lowering the interval will increase the load on your Fredhopper setup.
Fredhopper Suggest also uses a specific location when establishing the number of search results for a term which is the same as the scope for that search term. Please ensure that this location contains all the restrictions you apply to your search. For example, if you restrict by country (such a //catalog01/en_GB/country=UK), you have to ensure that the same restriction is set in the scope instead of it being //catalog01/en_GB only. Otherwise, the number of results might be incorrect.

 

Why do I sometimes get different results for the same query shortly after each other?

By default, Fredhopper Suggest is constantly updating the number of results per search term and putting a high emphasis on frequently requested terms. Therefore, one answer could be that the search term in question received an update because it was queried more often.
At this moment, Fredhopper Suggest will also not share the number of results per search term across instances. If you have more than one Suggest instance running and have your load balancing configured to access any of the instances instead of providing a specific one to a specific customer it can happen that the numbers for a specific search term are updated on one instance, but not yet on the other, thus displaying two different sets of results.

 

Why do I see a search result number of zero for most searches after a Suggest reindex?

Depending on your Fredhopper Suggest setup, a full reindex will either

• overwrite all result numbers with new ones
• reset all result numbers to 0
• keep the current result number where available

In the latter two cases, all terms with a zero result will be registered for review by Fredhopper Suggest to determine the actual number. Depending on the size of your Suggest index and the rate at which search terms are reviewed, this process can take several hours. Please be aware that Suggest search terms with a higher display frequency in suggestions will get checked faster.

Why are certain terms not shown?

Fredhopper Suggest operates from its own index separate from the data loaded into your Fredhopper instance. Please ensure that the term in question is included in the index and not removed during index generation, for example. Please note that Fredhopper Suggest will automatically remove all search terms that are shown to have zero search results from the indices. The exception is terms that are explicitly defined as redirects in the index.

Why are my results in product suggestions ranked differently compared to search listing pages?

When using product suggestions served by Fredhopper Suggest, you might notice that the ranking of the Suggest products might differ from the ranking of actual search result pages. The reason for this is that Fredhopper Suggest is a separate product apart from the standard Fredhopper installation and is using its own data set to render results. Product suggestions, like all other suggestions, will get a specific sort order during the index generation which might not exactly match the sorting within Fredhopper, especially when taking local rankings (Fredhopper 7.1+) into account. Please contact your Fredhopper consultant for possible options regarding the ranking used in Fredhopper Suggest.
Additionally, please be aware that, by default, the results will be reported in alphabetical order per index after the result values have been determined. Please contact your Fredhopper consultant to discuss further possibilities.

Why are my results numbers for category or brand suggestions not updated?

When using suggestions that refer to a specific position within the Fredhopper catalog (category landing pages, brand landing pages), please ensure that this location within Fredhopper is defined in the fhLocation parameter. Fredhopper Suggest is using that parameter to extract result counts per position.

Why some Keywords uploaded in Keywords.csv are not producing suggestions?

The keyword Suggest service has a minimum threshold for the frequency of the keywords which is 5,
meaning only words that have a search frequency of at least 5 will generate suggestions. All terms with a lower frequency will be filtered out.

Is HTTPS the preferred way to use suggest?

This is a choice of the customer and their setup. We added this feature as it was requested for quite a long time and also because it helps to integrate our services with the customers better ( no annoying invalid certificate warnings, also no need for a proxy on the customer side to avoid such warnings ).

Will we stop the HTTP API someday?

No, we will offer both HTTP and HTTPS.

How much slower is HTTPS compared to HTTP?

It highly depends on the connection that you have with Fredhopper services, but usually, the slow down is in the range of 50ms to 200ms.

Is changing HTTP into HTTPS in each URL the only thing to change?

On our side, we will offer the same service over both HTTP and HTTPS, changes on how to consume the suggest service are made on the front-end. This means any request the frond-end makes to us has to pass via HTTP or HTTPS.