Joomla's Smart Search

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<div class="atitle2" style="padding:10px;background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7);">Joomla's<br>
    <div class="atitle" style="font-size:200% !important"><span class="db8orange">Smart Search</span></div>
        <br><br><br><br>
        <span class="apage1">by Peter Martin / <a href="https://db8.nl" target="_blank">db8.nl</a></span>
        <br>
        <span class="apage1">slides: <a href="https://slides.db8.nl" target="_blank">https://slides.db8.nl</a></span>
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        <div style="margin: 0 auto;">
        <a href="https://db8.nl" title="Joomla Specialist db8 Nijmegen" target="_blank">
            <img height="50" style="border:0;background:transparent;margin-right:20px;
            box-shadow: 0 0 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15);" src="images/db8-logo.svg" alt="db8">
        </a>
    </div>
</div>

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<div class="title">Core <span class="db8orange">Smart Search</span><br>
    <ul style="font-size: 70%">
        <li>Search</li>
        <li>Smart Search</li>
        <li>Large Websites</li>
        <li>Questions</li>
    </ul>
</div>

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<div class="title"><span class="db8orange">Search</span> (com_search)</div>

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### Search (com_search)

<ul>
  <li>Used until Joomla 3.3.12</li>
  <li>Keyword-based, full-text search</li>
  <li>No real indexing: queries scanned content live</li>
  <li>Basic query-matching – no context or ranking</li>
  <li>Plugins search content in specific tables
    <ul>
      <li>content</li>
      <li>categories</li>
      <li>contacts</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

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### Problems with Search (com_search)

<ul>
  <li>Search slow on large sites</li>
  <li>No control over weighting/relevance</li>
  <li>No fuzzy matching or synonyms</li>
  <li>Plugins needed for everything</li>
  <li>Order Plugins = order search results</li>
</ul>

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<div class="title"><span class="db8orange">Smart Search</span> (com_finder)</div>

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### Smart Search (com_finder)

<ul>
  <li>Since Joomla 2.5, improved in Joomla 4+</li>
  <li>Pre-indexes content in database</li>
  <li>Tokenizes and categorizes words</li>
  <li>Supports fuzzy logic, stemming, synonyms</li>
  <li>Ranks results by relevance</li>
  <li>Fast: no need to search raw content each time</li>
  <li>Autocomplete with Ajax</li>
</ul>

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### Smart Search Database Tables

<ul style="font-size: 60%">
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_filters</span> – Stores search filter settings (e.g. published status, language)</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_links</span> – Main index: one row per searchable content item (article, contact, etc.)</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_links_terms</span> – Maps indexed content to search terms (tokens)</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_logging</span> – Logs the indexing process and errors</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_taxonomy</span> – Stores hierarchical content groupings (like categories)</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_taxonomy_map</span> – Links indexed items to their taxonomy entries</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_terms</span> – All individual words (tokens) used in the index</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_terms_common</span> – Stop words (ignored common words like “the”, “and”)</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_tokens</span> (MEMORY) – Raw tokens extracted from content</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_tokens_aggregate</span> (MEMORY) – Aggregated data about tokens (for scoring)</li>
  <li><span class="db8orange">#__finder_types</span> – Content types in the index (e.g. articles, contacts)</li>
</ul>

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### Smart Search Architecture

<ul>
  <li>Finder Indexer scans and stores content tokens</li>
  <li>Indexer supports multilingual content</li>
  <li>Uses plugins to index different content types</li>
  <li>Search is query → tokens → matched results</li>
</ul>

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### Smart Search: Indexing

<ul>
  <li>Manual
    <ul>
      <li>Components > Smart Search > Index > Index</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Automatic (on save)</li>
  <li>CLI support for batch indexing
    <ul>
      <li><code>cli/php joomla.php finder:index</code></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Keeps index updated in near-real time</li>
</ul>

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### Smart Search Configuration

<ul>
  <li>Including/excluding content types</li>
  <li>Language settings</li>
  <li>Synonyms, stop words, stemming</li>
  <li>Control over what gets indexed and how</li>
  <li>Filters</li>
</ul>

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<div class="title"><span class="db8orange">Large</span> websites</div>

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### Large Sites

- Performance https://docs.joomla.org/Smart_Search_on_large_sites
- Elastic Search

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### Some resources

<ul style="font-size: 70%">
<li>https://www.joomlart.com/blog/smart-search-joomla-4-a-new-all-in-one-search-component</li>
<li>https://docs.joomla.org/Smart_Search_on_large_sites</li>
<li>https://docs-next.joomla.org/help/smart-search/smart-search-options/</li>
<li>https://joomla.center/en/knowledge-base/smart-search-joomla</li>
<li>https://docs.joomla.org/Smart_Search_quickstart_guide</li>
</ul>

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<div class="title"><span class="db8orange">Questions?</span></div>

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## Photo Credits

<ul style="font-size:50%">
<li>https://unsplash.com/photos/magnifying-glass-near-gray-laptop-computer-d9ILr-dbEdg</li>
<li>https://pixabay.com/photos/notebook-paper-pages-open-731212/</li>
<li>https://unsplash.com/photos/black-nikon-dslr-camera-beside-black-framed-eyeglasses-and-black-framed-eyeglasses-SsoKppt2pqY</li>
<li>Generated with ChatGPT</li>
<li>https://unsplash.com/photos/landscape-photo-of-mountain-island-DXQB5D1njMY</li>
<li>https://unsplash.com/photos/a-room-with-a-lot-of-books-in-it-O_DUcg4cDlc</li>
<li>https://unsplash.com/photos/a-group-of-white-and-orange-objects-IVGZ6NsmyBI</li>
</ul>

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