Using Search Profiles with Tabbed Search Experiences

Updated

Search Profiles let you manage multiple search experiences from shared indexed content. This article explains how to integrate profile selection into your search UI for tabs, page-specific searches, and audience-specific routing.

Why Integrate Search Profiles

  • Independent analytics: profile-level analytics are available when tracking events include model.
  • Experience-specific tuning: apply different Data Filters, Search Fields, Ranking, Promotions, and Rules per experience.
  • Shared index, different outcomes: maintain one index while changing which results are shown and how they are ranked per profile.

Common Ways to Integrate Profiles

Tabbed Search Interface

Assign one profile per tab when tabs represent different content goals, such as Products, Documents, and Support.

Page-Level Profile Routing

Route users to different profiles by page or section, such as Admissions search versus Faculty Research search.

Audience-Specific Search

Select profiles based on audience context when public and authenticated users need different default filtering or ranking behavior.

Search Request Profile Selection

Pass profile selection in the search request by using the model parameter. This tells Site Search which profile configuration to use for result generation.

Tip: Keep profile names and routing logic consistent across your search UI, API calls, and deployment environments.

Platform-Specific Guidance

Drupal

Use separate Views and assign each View to a Search Profile in Advanced Query settings. See Use and invoke different Search Profiles with Drupal Views.

Custom Implementations

Pass the selected profile in each search request through model. Track searches with the profile identifier in analytics events so profile-level reporting is populated.

UI Kits

Initialize each search experience component with its intended profile and keep that mapping explicit in your UI configuration.

Analytics Tracking Requirements

Search request profile selection and analytics profile attribution are related but separate:

  • search requests determine which profile configuration is used for result generation
  • analytics events use properties.model to attribute events to profile-level dashboards
  • without model in tracking events, profile dashboards may show zeros while data still appears under All Profiles

Verification Steps

  1. Open your browser developer tools and select the Network tab.
  2. Perform searches in each experience.
  3. Confirm search requests include model with the expected profile name.
  4. Filter network traffic for tracking requests.
  5. Inspect tracking payloads and confirm properties.model matches the intended profile for each experience.

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