Using analytics to understand customer search behavior, we used a strategy pattern to return the right search strategy for each on-site search for a big boost in sales.

1. Optimizing Solr for Performance & User Experience SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

3. 12 year old online business

4. 600k+ SKUs

5. 1.5M Songs

6. Faceted navigation with Solr

7. On-site search with Solr

8. Lots of needles in a huge haystackSFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll : @briandoll

10. 2k app requests per minute

11. MySQL database

12. 5 memcache instancesSFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

14. ~100ms average response time

15. 3 Solr hosts on VMWare

16. 50% CPU load, 2GB memory each

17. 1.00 Apdex ScoreSFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

18. We love that the structure of your data is part of your Solr environment (schema.xml) And the way you query against that data is part of your app SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

19. on-site search is not as varied as we had thought SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

20. Surprisingly, lots of people search like this: Piano SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

21. What if we applied a strategy pattern to our search queries? SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

22. “Instrument” searches could get their own strategy. “Artist” searches could get their own. … SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

23. Make sure your default search is working well first! Subtle changes to our algorithm provided a 32% increase in per-search value, with some phrases seeing an increase of over 3000%! SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

24. We construct various strategies: ... DEFAULT_SEARCH_HASH = { :id_codes => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 1024, :slop => 2 }, :bucket_proper_names => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 500, :slop => 2 }, :bucket_titles => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 450, :slop => 100 }, :bucket_songs => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 64, :slop => 5 }, :bucket_primary_cats => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 32, :slop => 100}, :bucket_secondary_cats => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 16, :slop => 100 }, :bucket_binding => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 2, :slop => 100}, :bucket_lead_time => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 1, :slop => 100}, :bucket_blurbs => { :search_type => :phrase, :boost => 0.05, :slop => 7 }, :text => { :search_type => :term, :boost => 0.005 } } ... def self.popular_instrument_strategy(search_phrase) params = {:instrument_text => {:search_type => :phrase, :boost => 600, :slop => 2 } } Strategy.new("default-instrument", search_phrase, params , :top_selling) end ... SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

25. And then we have an algorithm to help determine which strategy we should apply to an incoming search request: [redacted] SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

26. Implementing these strategies provided an 86% increase in per-search value. We can now fine-tune individual categories of searches, as well as specific phrases. SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

27. Rule of thumb: Don't try to please everybody. Please the people who make you money. Tuning your search algorithm is an endless game, but if you focus on pleasing customer X, it'll cost you. SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll

28. In order to make all this happen, we relied heavily on two tools: SFBay Apache Lucene/Solr Meetup - Jan 2010 Brian Doll :@briandoll