Top 5 Usecases of Solr to Power Your Web & Mobile Search

May 13, 2015 by Ajitesh Kumar · Leave a comment
This article represents top 5 usecases for using Solr to power your web and mobile search. Note that in case of mobile search requirements, Solr exposes APIs that could be used to retrieve data from Solr index server and serve to mobile client. It also presents a classification of websites which are using Solr to fulfill their search requirements. Please feel free to comment/suggest if I missed to mention one or more important points. Also, sorry for the typos.

Following are the key points described later in this article:

  • Top 5 Usecases for Solr Search
  • Different Classes of Websites using Solr to Power Search Engines
Top 5 Usecases for Solr Search
  • Search Engine: Many a websites uses Solr to power their core search engine. For example, Solr search powers the search engine for products search on ecommerce websites, job search in jobs websites, coupons search in coupons websites, documents search in document-based websites etc. Examples of such websites include reddit.com, cnet.com, flipkart.com, jobreez.com, zappos.com etc
  • Site Search: Many websites uses Solr search for just the site search. For example, netflix.com, comcast.com
  • Search Suggestions or auto-suggest or auto-complete: Solr search is also used for auto-suggest feature to predict rest of the words when users type the search keyword in the search text field. For example, sears.com
  • Faceted Search: Many websites use Solr API for Faceted search, also termed as faceted navigation or faceted browsing. Wikipedia defines faceted search as following:
    Faceted search, also called faceted navigation or faceted browsing, is a technique for accessing information organized according to a faceted classification system, allowing users to explore a collection of information by applying multiple filters. A faceted classification system classifies each information element along multiple explicit dimensions, called facets, enabling the classifications to be accessed and ordered in multiple ways rather than in a single, pre-determined, taxonomic order. Examples of websites using solr for faceted search includes jobville.com, sears.com
  • Full text Search: Websites consisting of large number of documents uses Solr for full-text search. In a full-text search, a search engine examines all of the words in every stored document as it tries to match search criteria for example (text specified by a user).
Different Classes of Websites using Solr to Power Search Engines

Following are some of the most common classification of websites which uses Solr to power their search engines:

  • Jobs Websites: Job search
  • Ecommerce websites: Products search
  • Social networking websites for people search
  • Content websites: Search across different channels such as music, sports, autos, travel etc.
  • Document-based websites for documents search. For example, searching across research papers, patent documents, newspapers etc.
  • Coupons websites for coupons search
  • Tickets websites for tickets search
  • Real Estate Websites: Real estate search
  • News & magazine websites for news search
  • Classifieds websites

 

Ajitesh Kumar
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Ajitesh Kumar

I have been recently working in the area of Data analytics including Data Science and Machine Learning / Deep Learning. I am also passionate about different technologies including programming languages such as Java/JEE, Javascript, Python, R, Julia, etc, and technologies such as Blockchain, mobile computing, cloud-native technologies, application security, cloud computing platforms, big data, etc. I would love to connect with you on Linkedin. Check out my latest book titled as First Principles Thinking: Building winning products using first principles thinking.
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