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Using front ends, Setting up a front end – Google Search Appliance Getting the Most from Your Google Search Appliance User Manual

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Google Search Appliance: Getting the Most from Your Google Search Appliance

Search Experience

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The URL for the default search page is http://SEARCH_APPLIANCE_NAME. For example, if your search
appliance is named compgsa, the built-in search page is available at http://compgsa. You can also link
this URL from your website to provide user access to it.

Using Front Ends

A front end is a framework that manages most of the elements of a single search experience, including:

The appearance of search and results pages

The data that is returned in search results

The arrangement of the search results

In each front end, you can use different search appliance features to create a unique search experience
for a specific user group. For example, suppose that you want to create different front ends for users in
Sales and users in Engineering, based on their different requirements.

Users in Sales need to be able to search the entire index, but would like certain types of documents
(presentations, forecasts, and product documentation) to appear at the top of the search results. Users
in Engineering need to search only a subset of the index and would like technical documents to appear
at the top of the search results.

To ensure that each user group sees preferred documents at the top of the search results, you might
use various search appliance features, including KeyMatches (see “Forcing Specific Documents to the
Top of Search Results” on page 34
) and result biasing (see “Influencing Results Rankings” on page 48). To
segment the index so that users in Engineering only search the part of the index that interests them, use
a search appliance feature called “collections” (see “Segmenting the Index” on page 50).

Most of the search appliance features described in this section are associated with a front end, including
features that give users feedback on their searches and features that refine search results. You create
and manage search experiences by using anywhere from a few to all front end features.

There is no limit to the number of front ends that a single search appliance can have. You can create
multiple front ends to deploy multiple search experiences for users.

Setting Up a Front End

Set up a front end by performing the following steps with the Admin Console:

1.

Creating a front end on the Search > Search Features > Front Ends page, shown in the following
figure.

2.

Selecting the front end that you want to edit.