SmartSuggest: Improved Suggestions

Enhancements to Query Suggestions for a Better Search Experience

Suggestions are essential for enhancing user search experiences, and our data reveals that for customers using our smartSuggest feature, nearly 60% of search queries are influenced by these suggestions.

We identified two key areas where our query suggestions could be further refined:

Previously, like many auto-suggest solutions, ours was limited in leveraging word segmentation—an essential feature for languages such as Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, and Dutch.

This limitation sometimes prevented users from feeling fully understood during query formulation. For instance, a user typing “tisch” (meaning “table” in German) might not receive an ideal range of prefix and suffix suggestions, such as "tischdecke," "gartentisch," and "klapptisch." Our improved implementation now fully addresses this, delivering more accurate and engaging suggestions.

In 2023, we introduced inspirational AI-Suggestions (https://searchhubio.canny.io/changelog/smartsuggest-new-ai-suggestions-type) that aim to inspire users before they even start typing by identifying and amplifying micro-trends in search behavior.

Through extensive data analysis, we found that these suggestions indeed impact user searches, but we saw potential to enhance them further. The updated implementation now automatically filters underperforming queries, giving higher-impact queries a greater opportunity to drive traffic.