Site Search - Release Notes (April 2, 2026)

SearchStax Site Search release notes for April 2, 2026 include Smart Answers controls, incremental crawl controls, and default Auto-Suggest behavior for new apps.

Added

Smart Answers Controls

Site Search now includes Smart Answers Controls. In this release, you can enable or disable Smart Answers for each Search Profile, control how answers appear, and choose which question types Smart Answers can answer.

Smart Answers Controls use the standard Save Draft and Publish workflow, including publishing to multiple Search Profiles.

Smart Answers Page and Toggle

A new Smart Answers page is available under Optimizations. It is tied to the selected Search Profile, so you manage Smart Answers separately for each profile. On this page, you can enable or disable Smart Answers, save a draft, and publish when you are ready.

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

To enable Smart Answers for a Search Profile, follow these steps:

1. Select the Search Profile you want to configure.
2. Go to Optimizations > Smart Answers.
3. Turn on Enable Smart Answers.
4. Save a draft or publish the change right away.
5. Optionally publish the same change to multiple Search Profiles.

Example: A healthcare organization might enable Smart Answers for its patient education Search Profile while leaving it disabled for its provider Search Profile.

Display Parameters

The Display Parameters tab lets you control how Smart Answers appears to visitors. You can set the approximate maximum answer length, turn Use Title Field on or off for citation titles, turn the Show More setting on or off, and choose when it appears.

A preview section on the same tab updates as you change these settings. This lets you review the display before publishing.

Here are a few practical ways to use these settings:

• Use a shorter answer length when you want shorter summaries that are easier to scan in search results.
• Enable Show More when you want visitors to see a concise answer first, then expand it for more detail.
• Use the title field for citations when you want citation links to match your indexed document titles instead of generated ones.

For example:

• A healthcare organization might use a shorter answer length to keep symptom and treatment summaries short in search results.
• A university might enable Use Title Field so citation links match the course and policy page titles students already see on its website.
• A healthcare organization might enable Show More so visitors can read a brief answer first, then expand it for more detail when needed.

The preview section helps reviewers check those display choices before publishing.

Reasoning Controls

The Reasoning Controls tab lets you choose which question types Smart Answers can answer. It includes two groups of settings:

• Intent Controls: Informational, Navigational, Transactional, Opinion/Recommendation, and Other Questions
• Reasoning Controls: 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.

This gives you more control over when Smart Answers appears. For example:

• If you disable Opinion/Recommendation, Smart Answers will not answer recommendation-style questions.
• If you disable Temporal, Smart Answers will not answer time-sensitive questions.
• If you keep Informational enabled, but disable Open-Ended, Smart Answers can answer straightforward factual questions while limiting broader responses.

To review these settings, follow these steps:

1. Open the Reasoning Controls tab.
2. Review and enable or disable intent types as needed.
3. Review and enable or disable reasoning types as needed.
4. Save a draft to test the configuration.
5. Publish when the question types match the experience you want to provide.

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.

To add a content exclusion, follow these steps:

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 that matches any rule.

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

Incremental Crawl Controls and Crawl Type History

You can now enable Incremental Crawl in crawler schedule settings for new and existing crawlers. The Incremental Crawl option appears only when scheduling is enabled, and it is turned on by default for new scheduled crawlers.

Crawler History now includes a Type column so you can quickly see whether a crawl was Incremental or Full. One-time crawl events and older crawl history entries appear as Full.

Changed

Auto-Suggest Is Disabled by Default for New Apps

Auto-Suggest is now disabled by default for new apps. This makes Auto-Suggest an opt-in setting for newly created apps instead of a default-on one.

Improved

Promotions Missing Status

If an internal Promotion links to an item that no longer exists in the search index, the Missing status now appears in the Promotions table and in the Promotion itself.