After you have synchronized your data to Algolia, you can configure your search for optimal relevancy. You can do this in the Algolia dashboard, on the details page of your indices. You should see your newly created indices, with the following naming pattern:
  • ${hostname}__${site-id}__products__${locale}
  • ${hostname}__${site-id}__categories__${locale}
  • ${hostname}__${site-id}__contents__${locale} (optional)
The total number of indices created depends on the number of locales your site supports. When you assign Algolia cartridges to a site, they automatically support all the locales the site uses. You can customize the list of locales with the Locales for indexing custom preference or the localesForIndexing job step parameter.
Be aware that indexing many locales can affect performances.

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Configure your searchable attributes

When setting up and configuring your index, the first step is to decide which attributes you want to use for searching. Add them by going to Configuration > Searchable attributes. For more information, see Searchable attributes. To begin with, you may consider adding the following attributes: name, short_description, and long_description.

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Configure your facets

First, define the attributes you want to be available as facets in the Configuration > Facets tab on the Algolia dashboard. We recommend to add at least the following attributes:
  • The Algolia cartridges support all the currencies your site uses. The price attribute relates to each currency. For example, if your site is using USD and EUR, add price.USD and price.EUR.
  • __primary_category.0, __primary_category.1, __primary_category.2
  • Facets relevant to your products, such as brand, size, and color.
The actual facets depend on your attribute names and your record model. For example, if you choose the product-level record model, some facets would become variants.price.USD, variants.size, variants.color.
Different category levels are represented by the corresponding __primary_category attributes. These attributes are suitable for hierarchical faceting in Algolia, such as Women > Dresses > Evening Dresses: __primary_category.0, __primary_category.1, and __primary_category.2.
With faceting, Algolia offers capabilities that are similar to Salesforce product variation grouping.

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Configure results grouping

Results are grouped by default when you use the product-level record model. For the variant-level record model, if your catalog is large, it’s common practice to group related variants in the results by displaying one result per base product. To do that:
If you enable results grouping, you should add color swatches so users can see the different color variations.

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Configure your replicas

You can use replicas to let your users sort search results in different ways, such as sorting by price in ascending and descending order. To create the replicas for sorting on price:
  1. Select your products index and go to Replicas.
  2. Create two replicas:
    • hostname__site-id__products__price_USD_asc
    • hostname__site-id__products__price_USD_desc
This adds two new indices to your app.
  1. Configure each replica to sort by price.
You can add as many replicas as you need, depending on the number of locales your site supports or other sorting strategies you want to offer. Just make sure your usage of Algolia falls within the limits of your plan.