Example use of a Search Profile

Scope

This article aims to describe what a search profile is and how it can be used in FAS 7.5.2.x.

Symptoms/Context

The default search behavior can be configured as described in the Learning Center article Create an advanced Search Configuration. For specific situations it might be necessary to configure a different search behavior. This can be done by using search profiles.

The Fredhopper Platform fredhopper-7.5-revision-19 contains demo configuration in which the following scenario can be reproduced.

Resolution

The overview of existing search profiles can be found in the Business Manager under System > Search > Search Profiles. In the demo configuration shipped with the Fredhopper platform these are:

• picked_lists_profile
• brands_profile
• profile1

Let's consider a search using the keyword animal. The search is performed in the default universe and locale and leads to the following location:

fh_location=//catalog01/en_GB/$s=animal

209 items are returned by the search using the EXACT pass.

The default search configuration can be found in the Business Manager under System > Search > Search passes. By clicking on the EXACT pass we can see that it searches in the following fields:

• brand
• categories
• colour
• gift occasion
• material
• name
• range
• size
• style number.

This means that products which contain the search term in either of these fields will be returned.

If this behavior is desired by default, but under specific circumstances should be different, then a possible option is to use a search profile. The search profile can be added to the query, as described in the Fredhopper Query Language:

$s=<keyword>;t=<search_profile>

If we use the brands_profile from the demo setup, then the location looks as below:

fh_location=//catalog01/en_GB/$s=animal;t=brands_profile

Clicking on this profile in the Business Manager we can see that a single field is enabled: the brand field. This means that we are searching for matches of the keyword in the brand field only. 196 results are returned. These are the 196 results from the initial query which have the brand "Animal".