Language-Specific Search Experiences

The default language experience of all Search Apps is English (en).

Components of a Specific-Language Experience

When a Search App has multiple languages, each one includes a complete Search Experience profile. That is, each of the enabled languages has its own:

• Analytics: The Search App maintains separate databases of user behavior for each of the enabled language experiences. The Dashboard, Searches, Items, Power Search, and Search Feedback tables all summarize user behavior for one language only.
• Search: For each language, the Search App maintains a completely separate set of Results Configurations, Basic Relevance settings, and Search Profiles. The Search Preview and Hosted Search App draw from this language-specific profile of features.
• Recommendations: Auto-Suggest and Related Searches can be enabled for all available languages.

Adding Language-Specific Experiences

To add a language, navigate to Site Search > App Settings > Languages.

Click the Add Language button. Select an available language from the list, and click the next Add Language button.

Be sure to Save the changes. It can take half a minute for the Search App to build the infrastructure to support the new language experience.

Once a language is added, you should configure the App for the language – at a minimum the Results Configuration.

Managing Fields for Custom Apps

In order to support multiple languages on a Custom App, you will need to make sure your fields are formatted compatible with Site Search. This involves customizing your schema to include fields of the proper type. These fields can then be used to store and index data in different languages and types as per your app’s specific requirements.

The dynamic fields for supported languages are already present in your schema as follows:

 <dynamicField name="*_txt_es" type="text_es"  indexed="true"  stored="true"/>
 

The snippet above is for the Spanish language, but the same format applies to all available language types.

For all fields you intend to analyze for stemming, stopwords, synonyms, etc, use the format above. These are fields you typically use as display and search fields.

If you don’t need to analyze the field, e.g., faceting, or exact match, you can use the string type _es_s.

Delete a Language from the Search App

It is also possible to delete a language from a Search App. Select the checkbox beside the language and then click the trashcan icon.

Removing a language from a Search App permanently deletes all of the language-specific Search Experience settings and the Analytics data collected through that Search Experience. You can re-add the language later, but the previous work cannot be recovered.

Setting the “Default” Language

The Languages table and the Add Language dialog box mention a “default” language. This language-specific Search Experience will be used when the Search App receives a query with no language parameter specified.

You can change the default language by using the radio buttons on the Languages screen. Be sure to Save the change.

There is also a checkbox on the Add Language dialog that has the same effect. Again, after adding the language to the Search App you must remember to Save the changes.

Building a Language-Specific Experience

When you open a Search App for editing in Site Search, you must select which language-specific Search Experience to work on. You can edit only one language experience at a time. (You can switch from one language to another as long as you remember to save your changes.)

Pull down the language droplist in the Profile Selector and choose the desired language:

From that point on, building the Search Experience is the same for all language selections. Field boosting, for instance, works the same way for English, French, and Spanish experiences. Again, be sure to save your changes.

Language-Specific Searching

Now that you’ve built a language-specific Search Experience, how can you present it to your users?

Navigate to Site Search > Configurations > Search UI > Hosted Search Experience. This screen displays the URL of the Hosted Search Experience that serves the selected language.

In the image above, we selected “ES” (Spanish) as the selected language. Site Search then displayed the URL of the Spanish Hosted Search App. When your search users follow that URL, they will see the Spanish Search Experience.

Select a different language from the Language droplist and the URL will change to match that language.