Smart Answers

SearchStax Smart Answers for Site Search uses AI to provide clear, summarized responses to user questions based on the content available on a website. This capability enhances the search experience by delivering direct answers to specific questions, rather than linking to pages that contain the relevant information.

Add-On Feature

This is an optional feature that can be added to your SearchStax account. Ask your Account Representative for details.

For instance, a visitor to the SearchStax corporate website might ask, “What security features does Site Search offer?” Smart Answers summarizes the website security content into a succinct list:

By generating direct, natural language answers from your website content, Smart Answers helps visitors discover information faster, engage more deeply, and return to your site more often.

Smart Answers includes the following features:

How It Works

The Smart Answers feature is triggered by a question in the search field.

1. The visitor submits a keyword query or a natural-language question in the search box. The search page sends this request to Site Search. Site Search returns standard Solr query results.
2. If the query was a question, the search page sends a second request to Site Search, asking for a Smart Answer.
3. Site Search uses AI to analyze the Visitor’s intention. It uses the most relevant search results to generate a concise, AI-powered response.
4. The AI-generated answer is displayed at the top of the search results, ensuring immediate visibility.
   1. Streaming begins within two seconds after the query is sent.
   2. By default, after the first 100 words, a Show More option appears, letting users expand the rest of the answer if they want more detail.
5. (Optional) Visitors can provide feedback by clicking thumbs up or thumbs down, helping improve answer quality over time.

How Ranking Influences Smart Answers

Smart Answers uses the search results returned for the question to decide which content should influence the generated answer. Ranking settings can give more weight to higher-priority content fields when Site Search selects and prioritizes source content.

If you fine-tune Ranking for a Search Profile, that can change which documents and fields have the most influence on generated answers. For related tuning guidance, see Tuning Smart Answers and Ranking.

Smart Answers and Search Request Quotas

For purposes of calculating monthly Service Limits, each request to /emselect counts as one search request.

When Smart Answers classifies the query as a question, it tries to generate an answer. This sends a request to the /answer API, which counts as one additional search request. The additional search request is counted even if Smart Answers doesn't generate an answer.

When Smart Answers doesn't classify the query as a question, it doesn't try to generate an answer, so no additional Smart Answers search request is counted.

Enable and Configure Smart Answers

Smart Answers is configured for each Search Profile under Optimizations > Smart Answers. The page reflects the currently selected Search Profile, so you can manage Smart Answers separately for different search experiences.

On this page, you can enable or disable Smart Answers, save your changes as a draft, and publish them when you are ready to make them live. Where multi-profile publishing is available, you can publish the same Smart Answers configuration to multiple Search Profiles.

When Smart Answers is enabled and published, it appears in the Hosted Search Experience for relevant queries. When it is disabled and published, it does not appear.

1. Select the target Search Profile.
2. Go to Optimizations > Smart Answers.
3. Turn on Enable Smart Answers.
4. Select Save Draft to stage the change, or Publish to make it live.
5. If available, publish the same change to additional Search Profiles.

Display Parameters

The Display Parameters tab controls how Smart Answers appears to visitors. You can adjust the approximate maximum answer length, choose whether citations use your indexed title field with Use Title Field, and control whether longer answers display a Show More option.

Use a shorter answer length when you want concise responses that are easier to scan in search results. Enable Use Title Field when you want citation links to use your indexed document titles instead of generated titles.

Enable Show More when you want visitors to see a truncated answer first and expand the rest for more detail. Show More does not change the generated answer. It only truncates the displayed answer after the configured word count.

A preview on the same tab updates as you change these settings so you can review the presentation before publishing.

1. Open the Display Parameters tab.
2. Set the approximate maximum answer length.
3. Set Use Title Field for citation titles.
4. Set Show More for long-answer behavior.
5. Check the preview, then select Save Draft or Publish.

Reasoning Controls

The Reasoning Controls tab determines which kinds of questions Smart Answers is allowed to answer. It includes two groups of settings: Intent Controls and Reasoning Controls.

Intent Controls cover these question types: Informational, Navigational, Transactional, Opinion/Recommendation, and Other Questions.

Reasoning Controls cover these reasoning types: Single-Hop, Multi-Hop, Temporal, Conditional, Open-Ended, and Other Questions.

These controls are enabled by default. For Smart Answers to respond, a question must match both an allowed intent type and an allowed reasoning type.

For example, if Opinion/Recommendation is disabled, Smart Answers will not answer recommendation-style questions. If Temporal is disabled, Smart Answers will not answer time-sensitive questions.

1. Open the Reasoning Controls tab.
2. Set Intent Controls for the question types you want to allow.
3. Set Reasoning Controls for the reasoning types you want to allow.
4. Select Save Draft to test.
5. Select Publish when the behavior is correct.

Content Exclusions

The Content Exclusions tab lets you prevent selected indexed content from being used to generate Smart Answers.

Excluded content still appears in normal search results when relevant. Content exclusions affect Smart Answers only.

1. Open the Content Exclusions tab.
2. In Don't use content in Smart Answers where:, select a Search Field (for example, _url, content_type, or path).
3. Enter a Value for that field (for example, https://www.example.com/news/).
4. Add the rule, then Save Draft or Publish.

If you add multiple content exclusion rules, Smart Answers excludes content matching any of the rules.

Example: Exclude URLs containing /news/ and /events/ so Smart Answers focuses on evergreen policy and program pages instead of time-sensitive announcements.

Implement Smart Answers in Your Search Experience

To display Smart Answers in your custom search page, implement one of the SearchstaxAnswerWidgets:

• SearchstaxAnswerWidget JS
• SearchstaxAnswerWidget Vue
• SearchstaxAnswerWidget React
• SearchstaxAnswerWidget Angular

The Smart Answers API endpoint required by the widget can be found in App Settings > All APIs > Search & Indexing > Smart Answers API.

Smart Answers in Search Preview

Search Preview can show Smart Answers when both conditions are true:

• Smart Answers is available for your account.
• Smart Answers is turned on for the selected Search Profile.

If Smart Answers isn't available for your account, Search Preview doesn't send the Smart Answer API request or generate a Smart Answer response.

When Smart Answers is available for your account and turned on for the selected Search Profile, the Smart Answer response and links in Search Preview match the Hosted Search page.

Search Preview uses the published Smart Answers setting for the selected Search Profile. If you turn Smart Answers off in draft only, Search Preview still generates the Smart Answer until that change is published.

To validate this behavior in Search Preview, see Previewing Your First Search in SearchStax.

Smart Answer Feedback

Smart Answers includes a built-in feedback mechanism that allows website visitors to rate the quality of AI-generated answers using simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons. This feedback helps measure the helpfulness of answers and continuously improves the search experience.

The SearchstaxAnswerWidgets can incorporate appropriate Feedback Widgets to capture visitor reactions to the Smart Answer output. The Answer Widget doc pages (listed above) demonstrate how to configure Feedback Widgets for this purpose.

Viewing Smart Answers Feedback

To review user feedback on Smart Answers:

1. Go to Site Search > Analytics > Search Feedback.
2. Feedback entries related to Smart Answers include the following data:
   • The question the visitor asked.
   • The AI-generated answer.
   • The user rating (0 or 10).
   • The date of feedback submission.