Your site search matters. It's a critical part of the way your visitors interact with your site, and it's something we take extremely seriously at Slickstream. Check out the capabilities that our search function offers.
New overlay panel
When you click a search button, you'll see that Slickstream's new search panel animates into out of the bottom of the screen, blurring the page behind it while visible. This gives viewers a better sense that they are only a click away from the page they just left.
Grouped results
Instead of one long list of search matches, Slickstream now intelligently organizes all matches into groups based on various criteria. This helps viewers spot subsets of results that are of particular interest to them. For example, typing "lemon" might surface groups for "Baking", "Desserts", "Stories", and "Using This Ingredient" which can each be expanded and browsed individually.
Detailed View
The presentation of results has also been updated to adapt beautifully to every situation. Even as you type, you may see that items are presented differently depending on a variety of factors. For example, if you are looking for something generic like "lemon", you may see many small result cards. But as your search becomes more specific, the cards will actually grow to show you more details. And you can always drill in to see full details at any time.
Browser history support
Previously when a viewer clicked a link within search, it was difficult for them to return to their results. Now viewers can hit 'back' or 'refresh' and get exactly what they expect: their search results exactly as they left them. This also means that you can now share and bookmark search results or share the link with your friends.
Match highlighting
We will now highlight words within title, description, author, and ingredients that correspond to words in your search query. This helps viewers understand why a given search result appears.
Videos
Our index now includes information about pages on your site that have videos. This allows us to include videos in a separate group within the new search results. This complements our support for web stories, which are also presented in their own group.
Integrated ingredient search
Ingredient search has been a popular standalone feature among our recipe bloggers, and we've updated it to more seamlessly integrate with the overall search experience. Among the many groups within the results, you may see "Using These Ingredients". Tap on that group and you'll see that we show you cards with ingredient lists.
Recipe metadata
Also for food blogs specifically, we have added additional recipe-specific metadata into our index if it is available. This means that in some themes you may see aggregate ratings ("5 stars"), review counts, and total preparation time for some pages.
Got more suggestions for future updates? We'd love to hear them! And if you're not using the Slickstream Engagement Suite yet, what are you waiting for? Sign up here!
