Configuring Results Display

Updated

Learn how to configure the fields that appear in each search result in SearchStax Site Search. You'll select, order, and map result fields so users get the right context to decide what to click.

Prerequisites

Before you start, you'll need:

Why Results Fields Matter

Results fields control what users see for each search hit—commonly a title, description, image, and metadata like author or publish date. These fields help users scan and choose relevant results.

If a field you want isn't available in the Results Fields screen, it's not in the current schema loaded by Site Search. Fix ingestion first, reindex, then reload the schema so you can add it.

When you create a new Search App, Search Fields and Results Fields are pre-populated. This makes the Search Preview and Hosted Search Experience work without manual configuration. Review the defaults and modify them as needed.

Default Drupal Results Fields

  • tm_X3b_en_title
  • tm_X3b_en_description
  • tm_X3b_en_body

Default Sitecore Results Fields

  • url_s
  • title_txts_en

Note: Results Fields control which fields are returned and displayed. Search Fields control which fields are searched for relevancy. You don't need to add a field to Search Fields to display it in results. Add it to Search Fields only if matching that field should influence ranking.

Results Card Recommendations

Use title, description, and URL as a default result-card baseline. Add metadata fields such as category or date only when they help users decide what to click.

For example, when showing a doctor or faculty member result, configure the card to show Name, Title, Department or Specialty, and Location. This helps users confirm they found the right person before they click.

Note: The dashboard doesn't merge multiple source fields into one mapped output field. If your card design needs combined values, such as multiple taxonomy fields in one label, combine them in your UI layer after the search response is returned.

Results Fields vs. Search Fields

  • Results Fields control what data is returned and displayed on result cards.
  • Search Fields control what fields influence matching and ranking.
  • You can display a field without making it searchable.

Make a Field Eligible to Display

  1. Confirm the field is being ingested:
    • Connector (Drupal/Sitecore): Verify the CMS field is mapped and included in the index. Reindex.
    • Crawler: Confirm the data exists in the page HTML or add a custom extraction. Re-run the crawl.
    • Ingest API: Include the field in your payload and re-send.
  2. In Site Search, open your Search App and go to Configurations > Basic Configurations > Results Fields.
  3. Click Reload Schema to pull the latest fields from the index.

SearchStax Site Search Results Fields screen showing the Reload Schema control.

Note: For more information about Drupal field machine names and how they map to SearchStax fields, see Understanding Drupal field names in SearchStax.

Configure Results Fields

  1. In Results Fields, open Return Field and select a field to display. Optionally add a Label for a user-facing name.
  2. Map the field to a results card position such as Ribbon, Title, Description, URL, or Thumbnail. Use No mapping to show the raw field value after mapped fields.
  3. Click (+) to add the configured field to the list. Use (+) and (–) to change order. Click X to remove a field.
  4. Click Save Draft, then Publish to make changes available in Preview.

Note: The URL mapping controls the destination when a user clicks a result card. To also show the URL as text, add the same field again and set the second instance to No mapping.

Tip: Results Fields are App-level settings. Search Fields are Profile-level. If you use multiple Search Profiles, repeat relevancy changes in Search Fields per profile, but you only set Results Fields once per app.

Configure Hit Highlighting and Results per Page

  1. In Results Fields, turn on Hit highlighting to emphasize matched terms in your mapped fields.
  2. Set Results per page to control how many results appear on each page.

Validate in Preview

  1. Click Preview in the top navigation.
  2. Run a search for a known term or enter * to return all results.
  3. Confirm that:
    • The expected fields appear in each result, in the right order and mapped positions.
    • Data is populated and formatted correctly (for example, image fields contain full image URLs so thumbnails can be rendered).
  4. If fields are missing or empty:
    • Click Reload Schema in Results Fields and try again.
    • Verify ingestion and reindexing completed successfully.
    • For connectors, review field mappings and reindex.
    • For the crawler, confirm extraction rules.
    • For the API, verify the field is present in your JSON.

SearchStax Site Search Preview results confirming mapped fields render in the expected positions.

What's Next

Next, set up facets, filters, and sorting. If your App has multiple Search Profiles, you can configure these settings independently for each profile or apply changes across multiple profiles.

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