Solr Faceted Search

Faceted search is a technique that involves augmenting traditional search techniques with a faceted navigation system, allowing users to narrow down search results by applying multiple filters based on the faceted classification of the items. Building a Solr faceted search is by no means easy, but this article will show some ways around it.

Why have a faceted search?

Faceted search allows a customer who knows what they want to narrow by what’s important, based on the search terms they use, and without limiting their choice to exactly one item. It also helps those who aren’t sure what they want to outline some of the attributes they might want to consider. They can also be useful for teaching your customers the kinds of questions to ask. Statistics show that users prefer to use search for content discovery rather than navigation. So having facets will improve the search experience on your website greatly.

Create a faceted search for your website

Adding a Solr faceted search

Solr does have support for facets but it is not all that easy to set it up from scratch. As a way around the complex set up process, take a look at ExpertRec.

1. Navigate to https://cse.expertrec.com/newuser?platform=cse and signup with your Google ID.
2. Enter your website’s URL when prompted. You can select a server location near you and add the URL of your sitemap if you wish to. These will be auto-detected otherwise.
3. You can play around with the settings and customize the UI as the crawl runs. Once it is complete, you can check out a fully functional demo before taking the search to your website.
4. You can take the search to your website with little to no effort. All you need to do is to paste the code snippet available on the dashboard on your website.

ExpertRec comes with more customization options that you can explore. You can read this article to find a more detailed guide on the installation and configuration. Of course, you can make a Solr faceted search from scratch if you want to. But this is not recommended as it will take up developer time

Create a faceted search for your website