Smart search in Joomla 4 and 5: features and settings

Smart Search (com_finder) is a Joomla! core component of versions 4 and 5, allowing flexible configuration of site-wide search functionality on the search page, integrated with Joomla! modules.

Joomla 4 and Joomla 5 core includes an improved Smart Search component with the ability to actively index content for searches. The Joomla 3 version of this component included a manual indexing option that had to be run every time we added new content to the website. Smart Search in Joomla 4/5 offers an active content index, i.e. if we add new content to the site, the CMS automatically indexes the new items for search results. In addition, Smart Search in Joomla provides other new features such as advanced search filters and content maps.

Smart Search Features

Let's look at all the key features of the Joomla! search component:

1. Index.
2. Content Maps.
3. Filters.
4. Search Terms.

Index

Smart Search provides active indexing of Joomla! content, i.e. no need to click the Index button (although this feature is provided for content generated by other third-party components) when you add new content or modify existing content: all processes will be performed automatically in the background.

All indexed items are located on the Index page, which also contains the following features in the toolbar:

Index

Runs the indexer. A small pop-up window will appear with a progress bar that moves as the indexing process works through the content on your site. Do not close this pop-up window until the process is complete. On sites with a large amount of content, this can take a long time (tens of minutes). You should run the indexer after new content is added to your website that the smart search feature does not automatically know about. For example, batch importing new content where the importer does not automatically run smart search to index each new piece of content.

Publish

Makes selected items available to site visitors when performing searches.

Unpublish

Disables the ability to find this item when using search.

Delete

Removes the selected items from the index.

Optimise

Optimizes database index tables.

Clear Index

Clears all index tables of the Smart Search component. To continue using Smart Search, you must use the Index button after clearing. Keep in mind that clearing the index also clears the content filters, so you must re-enter the content filter settings manually after clearing.

Content Maps

Content Maps is a new feature of the Smart Search component in Joomla 4 and Joomla 5 that provides details about published and unpublished indexed content within the search component. Each content item indexed by Smart Search is associated with one or more content maps, which can then be used as filters during searches.

Content maps are divided into two parts:

1. Content card groups (branch) — These are containers for a specific type of information. For example, a card group could be "Type", "Category", "Event", "Language", or "Author".
2. Content maps are the actual metainformation values ​​in a particular group of maps, such as category names or author names.

These card groups and content cards form an advanced search bar accessible from the front end. Each card group can have a drop-down selection list, and content cards are added as values ​​to the corresponding list. More advanced components can override the default layouts and use multi-select lists or checkboxes instead.

It is important to note that card groups and content cards from different content types are combined into one list. A Joomla article in the News category and a news feed or contact in a category with the same name are mapped to the same content card in the same card group. This is a bit like tagging different content types with the same tag. As a result, your site visitor does not need to know how your content is classified to set the right filters to find it.

The Content Maps page displays all map groups in the smart search index along with a number indicating the number of content maps in that map group and items in the content map. Clicking the number with the number of content maps will display the content maps in that map group along with the number of content items that belong to that content map. A content item can belong to multiple content maps in a map group, and also to multiple map groups.

Filters

On the Filters page, you can create various search filters based on the following criteria:

In addition, you can use the filter expiration date in the Options tab:

Each new filter can be used for a menu item or module of the Smart Search component:

Search Terms

The Search Terms page displays statistics on the search words and phrases used by site visitors to search the site.

Smart search settings

The Joomla! Smart Search settings page contains the following tabs:

Smart Search

Here you can set default settings for the search page, which can be overridden by the menu item settings.

Index

These parameters are designed to control the process of indexing site content.

Permissions

This section configures permissions for the Smart Search component.

Page with a search form

To create a site search page, the com_finder component provides the Smart Search menu item type, which contains the following tabs:

Details

In addition to the settings common to all menu items, here you can specify a default search query, as well as a pre-created search filter.

Options

Here you configure the data that should be included in the site search results.

Advanced

Here you can configure additional functionality of the search page.

Smart search module

As a rule, the ability to search the site is provided on all pages of the site so that users do not have difficulty finding the information they need. For this, Joomla! provides the Smart search (mod_finder) module, the key settings of which are in the Module tab, among which are:

Search Filter

Assign a pre-created filter to the module.

Search Suggestions

Enable or disable the display of autocomplete suggestions.

Search Button

Enable or disable display of the search button for the search bar.

Set ItemID

Assign a menu item to which the user will be redirected to view search results.

Plugins

The Joomla 4 core includes the following plugins for the Smart Search component:

Content - Smart Search

Plugin for updating the index of the Smart Search component when creating, editing or deleting content elements on the site.

Smart Search - Content

A plugin for indexing Joomla materials, as well as updating the index of the Smart Search component when creating, editing or deleting materials on the site.
Attention! To ensure proper system functionality, the Content - Smart Search plugin must be enabled.

Smart Search - Categories

Plugin for indexing material categories.

Smart Search - Tags

Plugin for ensuring tag indexing.

Smart Search - Contacts

Plugin for providing indexing of contacts.

Smart Search - News Feeds

Plugin for indexing news feeds.

If your site uses third-party CCK, such as JoomShopping or SP Page Builder, you should activate the plugins that come with these extensions to search them. These plugins can be found in the Joomla admin panel under the list of plugins, filtered by type finder.