What does "Search" search?

Configure your Search Results page in the Utilities branch to determine what search will search (and not search) on your site.

A few important details about how Search works in Finalsite's CMS: 

• The way Search works is more than just keyword matching but is built to respect visibility, domain boundaries, and user experience.
• The content that is indexed is what is visible on actual site pages.
• Hidden elements like popups or modals are not included, since users can’t be directed to them from search results.

This article will show you how it works (and doesn't work), as well as how to configure both your Search Results page and the corresponding Search element(s) that are used on your site by site visitors, whether on your main district site or individual school sites. 

In this Article

• Step 1: Navigate to the Search Results page
• Step 2: Configure the Search element
  • Which Search Results page are you on? 
  • District Search element settings
  • Individual School Search element settings
• Step 3: Test it out
• What does "Search" search?
• What does "Search" not search?

Step 1: Navigate to the Search Results page

The Search Results in your CMS is designed to help users find content that is viewable on site pages within a specific domain. 

• To find the Search Results page in your platform, navigate to Composer > Pages > Utility branch and open the Search Results page.
• Toggle off the Compose button to go into Compose (or "edit") mode so that you can check the configurations that already exist on this page. 
• Explore to determine which element(s) may be Search elements.
• Click the settings gear in the Search element to confirm and configure the settings. 
  

Step 2: Configure the Search element 

Now that you have opened your Search element settings, you are now ready to configure the settings in the Search element. You may configure the Search Results pages differently, depending on whether it is the District or individual School domain.

Configure the Search element 

Now you can configure in the settings which site content will be included in the search results for visitors. 

• Open the Search Element settings. Click on the Results tab. 
• Expand out General Settings. 
• The options are: 
  • Current Domain: Results will be displayed from pages in the same domain.
  • Selected Domains: Results will be displayed from the current domain, as well as any other domain(s) selected from the dropdown menu.
  • All Domains: Results will be displayed from all domains in Composer.

District Search element settings

Many districts select All Domains so that visitors' search efforts can include content on any school sites as well as the district domain. 

Individual School Search element settings

It is likely that individual sites will not wish for their visitors' searches to result in content from all existing domains. For that reason, many will configure either of the following: 

• Current Domain to select only that school's content being included in searches.
• Selected Domains may be a possibility if admins want to include both the individual school and the district domain, as well. 

Step 3: Test it out

Finally, once you have your configurations saved, it's important to go to each domain and see what results will come up as if you were one of your site visitors. 

What does "Search" search?

• Any static page content (element titles, text within content elements). In order to appear in site searches, content must be displayed on a page.
• Page titles (as defined in Page Settings).
• Any content on pages that are housed in branches. 
• Dynamic content, meaning content that appears in elements based on the element’s settings.
• Details based on a user's clicks from another page. For example, a calendar event whose details appear on a new page.
• Content inside Tabs or Accordion elements is returned in a search result, but the user will be directed to the page containing the content, not the exact tab or accordion. 
• Content displaying in Calendar, Posts or all Athletics elements placed on site pages will be included in search results.
  
  • Calendar elements can include Event Times, Event Locations, and Event Notes in search results, as long as those fields are enabled in the element’s Event Settings. However, event Descriptions are not indexed and will not appear in site search results.

What does "Search" not search?

• Calendar event descriptions are not included in site search results. Even if descriptions are visible on the page, they are not indexed by the Calendar tool element.
• Media and files that live only in the Resources module but aren't being displayed on a page do not show up in site search.
• Content exclusively displayed in popups is not indexed in search. This includes post body content that is not displayed on a page but only in a popup when clicked upon. 
• SEO tags (Keyword, Description, etc) are not indexed in site search because they determine how your site is displayed when included in results on third-party search engines like Google; they do not apply to internal searches.
• Meta tags are not displayed on a page, so if we returned them as search results users would click on them and be taken to a page that doesn’t actually display the content they clicked on. This leads to users thinking that the search doesn’t work, when actually it works a little too well! 
• Text in page banners is not indexed in site search. Since banners can show up on multiple pages, doing so could fill the results up with pages that do not actually have the content the user was searching for.
• Posts that are "Expired" are not viewable on site pages, and are not included in site search results.
• Constituent directory profiles are not included in search results.