Indexing and Search

Search functionality is at the core of many websites and applications, enabling users to locate content quickly and efficiently. In an internationalized system, the challenges multiply as the diversity of languages, scripts, cultural expectations, and technical considerations come into play. Providing accurate, relevant, and user-friendly search results across multiple languages and locales is critical for delivering a global-friendly user experience.

This chapter explores the key considerations and best practices for indexing and search in internationalized systems. The lessons are organized as follows:

Indexing Considerations: Delve into the mechanics of building efficient and accurate indices for multilingual content. Topics include language-specific tokenization, stemming, stop words, and managing alternate spellings and transliterations.
Search Features: Examine the features that enhance search accuracy and usability, such as handling case sensitivity, accents, diacritics, and supporting synonyms and phonetic matches.
Full-Text Search: Learn how to configure full-text search systems to handle the complexities of different languages, including recognizing word boundaries and managing stop words.
Advanced Search Features: Explore strategies for implementing features like faceted search, multilingual thesauri, cross-locale search, and relevance scoring tailored to language-specific behaviors.
User Experience: Understand how to design a seamless search experience for users across different locales, including autocomplete, error handling, and mixed-script input support.
Tools and Technologies: Get an overview of popular search tools such as Elasticsearch and Solr, along with their capabilities and limitations in the context of internationalization.
Practical Implementation: Step through the process of configuring search systems for multilingual content, optimizing performance, and managing large datasets.
Testing and Validation: Learn methods to test and validate search functionality, ensuring it meets user needs and performs well across languages and edge cases.

By the end of this chapter, you'll have a comprehensive understanding of how to build and maintain effective indexing and search systems that cater to a global audience.