Has anybody implemented an Algolia search on the COS yet?

[cmathieu]

It seems like a good option but the implementation is more complex than I would have imagined and I'm wondering if anybody's used it on HubSpot yet.

[Phil_Vallender]

Hi @cmathieu

I have not done this on HubSpot but did conincidentally look at it a couple of days ago for a client. 

The implementation does seem rather complex, or perhaps powerful, it has lots of options. 

Based on the short amount of time I spent looking at it I concluded that you would have to use their javascript integration (potentially the search only/lite one) and upload pages to be indexed via their dashboard as a CSV. I didn't get chance to evaluate the 'build a search UI' bit. 

The other solution we looked at was Swifttype - easier to implement but more costly.

With Google Custom Search Engine going end of life, there is a gap to be filled. The £100 per year charge for CSE was really nothing. 

Good luck.

[sreid9]

Phil, it’s Sam from Swiftype here. Thanks for mentioning Swiftype as an alternative to Algolia!

Like you said, Swiftype Site Search is easy to set up and can be implemented without writing any code. We also provide a dashboard so you can customize your search experience and view analytics. If you need more control over how the search works, we have well-documented developer APIs. Here's a short product overview. 

Since Google is sunsetting their Custom Search Engine, we are actually offering a special migration package. Let me know if you have any questions and here is a link to the offer.

[cmathieu]

Thanks for the response. Yeah Swiftype looks like best-in-class and has an easy implementation scheme but also comes at a fairly significant cost for some of our smaller clients. The other one I found in my searching is https://www.sajari.com/ but I haven't actually tried it yet.

[Phil_Vallender]

We're also testing Bing Custom Search Engine but haven't completed the integration yet - let you know more when we have. 

[mitch_corlett]

@Phil_Vallender

Re: Bing Custom Search integration, since you didn't seem to have issues implementing your test.

Did you just use the default Bing Custom Search formatting for the search bar? Or was there some CSS styling you had to do to override the default appearance? (To be clear, I don't care about styling the search results, just the appearance of the search bar itself.)

Our (now former) vendor implemented Google Search when they built our site. It's in our Header global module, which has a custom HTML block where all that's pasted was the javascript Google provides for their Custom Search.

But it also seems they somehow overrode some of the Google default searchbar formatting with some CSS declarations (I see evidence in the stylesheet). Because when I tried to replace that javascript with the snippet provided by Bing, the styling didn't carry over. Plus I can't find Microsoft's stylesheet, so I know what should/could be overridden.

Any insight?

[Phil_Vallender]

Hi @mitch_corlett

I quickly gave up on the Bing search option - just too complicated to configure, leave alone style. Went with SiteSearch360 for that application and happen to be looking at using it again currently. 

Are you looking to replace Google Search with something new on your site?

[mitch_corlett]

@Phil_Vallender Yeah, we hate the ads from Google, so were looking at cost-effective replacement options. Bing was appealing because supposedly it was $4 per 1000 queries, and our site search isn't used terribly much, so it was essentially free. Configuration went ok, our site isn't complicated, but styling (or lack thereof), and their absense of documentation left much to be desired.

SiteSearch360 seems to be a good option though, and the price is right.

[dsky]

Another solution you can try, that is quick and easy to set up (and much cheaper than swiftype) is Site Search 360: https://sitesearch360.com/

[Phil_Vallender]

Thanks @dsky

Looks very interesting - any examples of successful implementation on HubSpot sites?

[Phil_Vallender]

Dont worry @dsky - we've done it. Very simple and seems to work well.

[dsky]

@Phil_Vallender ha, that was fast 🙂

This would have been the HubSpot example I found: https://inovacijubiuras.tele2.lt/paieska?st_search=video

Where did you implement it?

[narayan007]

yes i implemented and to manage with COS for algolia we need some custome implementation to index our COS data, it's not that much complecated but needs few hours to implement.