Improve Algolia search results

[thisisjoshford]

Goal

How might we improve search results for common queries on docs.near.org and near.org ? Potentially by setting custom redirect rules for the top 20-ish searches with better results such as pages from nearcatalog or directly to defi options for a search query such as marketplaces

Issue

Algolia search sometimes doesn't return the best results based on user search. For example, if a user searches for NFT the ideal result would have "Non-Fungible Token" section at the top but it's the sixth option:

Potential Solution / Additional Context

• Algolia indexer needs header optimization to return more meaningful results.
• Review Algolia docs to see how we can improve the automatic ranking or implement custom ranking.

Resources

• Algolia search log (From Algolia dashboard -> Search > Observe > Analytics)
• Algolia Ranking Docs

[s-n-park]

FYI: @jackson-harris-iii , @shelegdmitriy - on near.org some of the top search terms via the topnav were “ref-finance” and “sweat-economy” yet surprisingly these don’t show up under apps.

From this thread

[shelegdmitriy]

Well, this custom redirect rules feature is exactly what we need but it's not free. But still we can use a free trial to check how it works and then decide do we really want to pay for this feature or not. @thisisjoshford @charleslavon can we request a free trial? I believe it's worth to do from Monday to have a chance to test it properly. WDYT?

[charleslavon]

@shelegdmitriy Rules should already be enabled for the near.org algolia project. Let me get you access.

[shelegdmitriy]

During testing the custom rules & redirects feature, I could only configure a rule for query "sweat" or "sweet" to point to nearcatalog app. Redirects so far as a rule (to point directly to the https://dev.near.org/nearcatalog.near/widget/Index?id=sweat-economy page on nearcatalog) doesn't work. Maybe if we could somehow index the nearcatalog apps then we would solve this in a very easy way I think. This is something I'm about to take a look at.

But still, custom rules works perfect if there is a item in index. Let me explain a bit: if I have a sheleg_meteor.near account I can create a rule to propose a near account at first place instead of my real account. This means we can improve our docs.near.org by using re-ranking or rules.

Let me know your thoughts @charleslavon @thisisjoshford

[shelegdmitriy]

A small update so far: there is a new index test-nearcatalog-index with all the data which presented on this page. My next step is testing and adding this into the main index

[charleslavon]

A small update so far: there is a new index test-nearcatalog-index with all the data which presented on this page. My next step is testing and adding this into the main index

awesome. Did you create this manually?

[shelegdmitriy]

Maybe it's worth to split this issue into two subtasks? One for dev.near.org and another for docs.near.org?