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Enterprise & E-Commerce Search Consulting

We improve search, filtering, recommendations and search measurement for e-commerce catalogs, content-heavy websites, knowledge bases and enterprise platforms.

The work starts with a practical question. When someone searches, do they find the product, document, answer or next step they need, or do they leave, refine the search repeatedly, contact support, or buy something else?

Talk about your search

Why It Matters

Why Search Matters

Search is often the shortest path between a question and a decision, and what it decides depends on who is asking.

  • In a store, whether a shopper finds the right product, discovers a useful alternative, adds another item to the cart, or leaves.
  • In a large organization, whether a member finds a resource, an employee finds a policy, a customer solves a problem alone, or someone gives up and asks for help.

Search and filtering deserve the same care as navigation, product pages and checkout. Baymard research summarized by Shopify in 2026 found that 58% of desktop e-commerce sites and 78% of mobile sites have mediocre or worse product-list and filtering performance.

Search Inside Your Site, Not Google Rankings

This service covers the search box inside your website, store, portal or application. If you need search engine optimization, that is a different discipline. Explore SEO services.

What We Do

What We Help Improve

Strategy

Search Strategy and Platform Decisions

The first question is not which search product to buy. It is what people need to find, what data exists, what systems the search has to connect to, and what happens when a result is useful. We help teams evaluate the search they have, choose a platform when a change is needed, and build an implementation plan that accounts for catalog or content data, permissions, indexing, user experience, measurement, operations and cost.

  • Search audit and opportunity assessment
  • Platform evaluation and implementation planning
  • Content, product and metadata review
  • Indexing and data-pipeline strategy
  • Search UX and result-page requirements
  • Search analytics and relevance-measurement plan
  • Internal team training and documentation

Quality

Relevance and Search Quality

A search can return hundreds of results and still fail if the useful one is buried. We evaluate the queries people use, inspect what ranks first, and identify why the results do not match the need. That may involve synonyms, spelling and language handling, field weighting, ranking rules, product availability, content freshness, category logic, or the way a query is interpreted. We test changes against real query sets and defined relevance criteria before they reach the public experience.

  • Top-query and zero-result analysis
  • Query intent and synonym mapping
  • Relevance assessment and result grading
  • Ranking, boosting and business-rule review
  • Search-result and landing-page testing
  • Regression testing as content and catalog data change
  • Ongoing relevance review

E-Commerce

E-Commerce Search, Filtering and Recommendations

Shoppers do not always know the exact product name. They search by problem, brand, compatibility, material, size, use case, color, price range, or a word your catalog does not use. We improve the path from product discovery to purchase through search, filters, sorting, category navigation and recommendations.

  • Product-search relevance and typo handling
  • Zero-result and poor-result query recovery
  • Faceted navigation and mobile filter design
  • Product titles, attributes, categories and metadata
  • Sort order and merchandising rules
  • Related, substitute and complementary product strategies
  • Search-to-cart, search-to-purchase, revenue and average order value tracking

Enterprise Content

Content, Knowledge Base and Portal Search

Large sites often have a different search problem. Useful material exists, and it is spread across articles, PDFs, journal content, help centers, records, member areas and separate systems. We help organizations make that material easier to find and easier to trust, through content-model and metadata work, index strategy, relevance tuning, filters, permission-aware results, and measurement that shows whether people found a useful answer.

  • Search across multiple content sources
  • Article, document, journal and resource discovery
  • Facets for topic, date, format, audience, specialty or content type
  • Permission-aware and role-aware result handling
  • Knowledge-base and intranet search improvement
  • Content freshness and duplicate-result review
  • Search behavior, exit, refinement and support-deflection measurement

Measurement

Search Analytics and Measurement

A search box creates its own research data. Search logs show what people are trying to find, the words they use, what returns nothing, what they refine, and which results they choose. We set up reporting that turns that behavior into a practical improvement list, looking for the queries that indicate a missed product, a content gap, a poor filter, confusing language, or a problem with how results are ranked.

  • Search usage and search adoption
  • Top, rising and seasonal queries
  • Zero-result and low-result queries
  • Query reformulation and high-refinement behavior
  • Result clicks and click position
  • Search exit rate
  • Search-to-cart and search-to-purchase rate
  • Revenue and average order value from search sessions
  • Content engagement and support-deflection signals after search

Automation

AI Search and Product Recommendations

AI can help with query understanding, semantic retrieval, product discovery and recommendations. It does not replace product data, clear business rules, or relevance testing.

Before recommending an AI search or recommendation feature, we look at the catalog, the query behavior, the data quality, the permissions, the search volume and the decision the feature needs to support. Then we identify whether a simpler improvement, such as better attributes, synonyms, filters or ranking, would solve the problem first.

Where recommendations are appropriate, they help shoppers discover complementary products and support cross-sell. Platforms such as Algolia use interaction data to surface related items for that purpose.

Estimate revenue from an AOV lift →

The Process

How We Work

Learn What Search Needs to Accomplish

We begin with the people using search and the decisions they are trying to make. A shopper choosing a compatible product, a member looking for a resource and an employee searching for a policy need different results, filters and measures of success.

Review the Queries, Results and Data

We inspect real search terms, zero-result queries, refinements, result clicks, product or content data, filters and existing analytics. That shows whether the issue is the index, the ranking, the content, the interface, the permissions, or something outside search.

Prioritize the Changes

We separate fast improvements from larger platform or data work. A useful synonym, a better product attribute or a corrected filter may solve an immediate problem. Other needs require new indexing, a platform change, new content structures or a recommendation strategy.

Test, Release and Keep Checking

Search changes should be tested against real queries before release. Afterward we monitor the result quality and the behavior that matters: whether people find a product, complete a task, purchase, read, register, or stop needing help.

Platforms

Platforms and Search Systems

We work with the search platform you have when it fits the problem, and help evaluate alternatives when it does not. The right choice depends on the catalog or content, the data sources, the user roles, the integrations, the editorial needs, the budget, and the search experience you need to create.

AlgoliaElasticsearch and OpenSearchApache SolrCoveoAdobe Search & PromoteCustom and homegrown search systems

We do not recommend a platform because it is new or because it has an AI feature. We recommend it when it fits the work people need the search to do.

Experience

Relevant Experience

Enterprise Search and Relevance Work

More than 15 years of enterprise-search experience, including work at the American Academy of Family Physicians across AAFP Journals and a network of websites and applications. That covered the parts of search that decide whether it is useful: indexing, relevance, content and metadata structures, search-interface design, filtering, analytics, testing and stakeholder communication.

Search Across Different Kinds of Information

We have worked with medical journals, product catalogs, member platforms and B2B content libraries. The information differs, and the central question is the same. Can the right person find the right thing quickly enough to act on it?

Clear Advice Before a Platform Decision

Search projects can become expensive quickly. We explain what is broken, what can improve without replacing the platform, what requires a larger investment, and what should be tested before a team commits.

Related website and search work

Adjacent projects covering catalogs, multi-source content, membership and measurement. None is a dedicated enterprise-search engagement.

Need People to Find More Than a Search Box?

Bad results, empty result pages and filters nobody uses are measurable problems. We start by reading what people actually type and where they give up.

Talk about your search