Optimizely
SearchStax Site Search now includes Smart Answers – our latest AI-powered enhancement that turns your search experience into something truly modern: fast, concise answers, generated from your trusted website content.
Smart Answers helps site visitors discover information faster, engage more deeply and return to your site more often.
What is Smart Answers?
Smart Answers is an AI feature that sits right on top of your site’s search results. When a visitor asks a question, it returns a short, direct answer – generated from your existing indexed content – delivering a concise answer without your visitor having to dig through a dozen links to find an answer.
It’s like having a built-in expert on your site, ready to respond to any questions your visitors ask.
Here’s how it works:
- A visitor asks a natural language question in the search bar.
- Smart Answers uses the most relevant results to generate a concise answer – cited and grounded in real content from your site.
- The answer appears instantly, above the traditional search results.
- Users have the option to provide feedback by providing a thumbs up / down.
So Long Keywords, Hello Questions and Answers
Search behaviors are evolving. Research shows that at least 65% of website visitors expect to be able to ask natural language questions and get responses back as part of their search experience. Let’s be honest: no one wants to search like this anymore –
economics or finance -remote -virtual
They’d rather just ask –
What in-person econ or finance programs do you offer?
Now, with Smart Answers, they can – and get an answer right away, keeping them engaged and reducing friction along the way.
AI Answers You Can Control
Delivering AI answers is powerful, but having control over how those answers behave is just as important.
Smart Answers includes enterprise-grade governance capabilities that allow teams to shape how AI responses behave on their site.
Organizations can configure answer length, determine which types of questions should generate AI answers and exclude specific content. These controls ensure Smart Answers delivers helpful responses while staying aligned with internal policies and brand standards.
With Smart Answers, you don’t just add AI to your search experience, you add AI answers your team can trust.
Viewing Feedback from Your Visitors
When a user interacts with Smart Answers, they can provide thumbs up / down feedback to rate the helpfulness of the response. This data is available in your Site Search dashboard under Analytics → Search Feedback.
This simple feedback loop helps you understand which answers are working – and where improvements may be needed.
Why Marketers Love Smart Answers
Smart Answers isn’t just a better visitor experience – it’s a better marketing tool.
- Modernize the digital experience: Meet rising visitor expectations for intelligent, fast and friendly answers
- Shift visitor behavior: Encourage natural language questions instead of short, ambiguous keywords – resulting in clearer intent and higher search satisfaction.
- Increase engagement: Faster answers mean happier visitors who are more likely to stay, click and convert.
- Maximize content ROI: Smart Answers reuses the great content you’ve already created – no new content or reauthoring required.
Key Capabilities of Smart Answers
Smart Answers helps organizations modernize website search while maintaining confidence in AI-generated responses.
Key Smart Answers capabilities include:
- AI-generated answers grounded in your site content
- Natural language question support
- Source citations and links in every response
- Enterprise governance controls for AI answers
- Adjustable answer length and expanded responses
- Content and exclusions for sensitive content
- Visitor feedback
What’s Next with Smart Answers and AI Search Solutions?
AI-powered search is evolving rapidly, and Smart Answers is just the beginning.
We’re continuing to expand the capabilities of Site Search with innovations that give organizations both the power of generative AI and the control they need to deploy it confidently. From enterprise governance controls to deeper analytics and additional AI-driven enhancements, our goal is to help organizations deliver faster, more intelligent search experiences.
Learn more about Smart Answers and our range of AI solutions and contact our team today to transform your site’s search experience.
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Product manager focused on helping marketers easily configure and optimize site search, delivering efficient workflows so teams can focus on what matters most in delivery of a great search experience.
