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Typeahead, also known as autocomplete or autosuggest, is a feature that provides real-time query and phrase suggestions as a user types into a search bar. This Core Settings function helps users find relevant results faster by predicting what they are trying to search. As the user enters text into the search box, the system predicts possible queries and displays instant suggestions in a dropdown menu. The suggestions refine dynamically when the user enters more characters. When the user clicks on the suggestion, the product or document displays.

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How suggestions are created

Suggestions are created in two different ways:
  • Custom terms. You can enter typeahead suggestions for products and documents. In addition to suggestions you want to include and display when a user searches, you can also enter suggestions to exclude that are not relevant. Excluding suggestions that are not relevant can enhance your user’s search experience as much as including suggestions that steer the user to the products or knowledge they seek.
  • Suggested terms. Every hour, Lucidworks Platform assesses the customer queries entered most often based on signals captured in the signals beacon or the Signals API. The top 1000 terms entered most often are added to the Included typeahead suggestions list.
Click your use case below to see examples of how typeahead suggestions can enhance the search experience:
For a plumbing company, examples of Included typeahead terms are:
  • black bathroom faucet
  • gold bathroom faucet
  • return policy
  • clearance
Examples of Excluded typeahead terms are:
  • shower curtain
  • bath towels
  • shower slippers

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View suggestions

The Typeahead screen displays tabs that contain Included and Excluded suggestions.
Core Settings Typeahead screen
You can perform the following actions to review or configure how the suggestions display:
  • To view suggestions that contain certain characters, enter those characters in the Search term field and press Enter.
  • To display suggestions based on persistence status, user who last updated the suggestion, or the date the suggestion was created, click Filters and select or enter the criteria.
    A suggestion marked as “persistent” means that terms generated hourly do not overwrite that suggested term.All custom typeahead terms are persistent and must be manually excluded or deleted. However, to ensure a suggested term on the Included list is not replaced by another term when the hourly regeneration adds the next top 1000 terms, toggle the Persistent field to on. In addition, editing a suggested term sets the Persistent field to on.
Core Settings Typeahead Filters
  • To set the options and columns that display on the Typehead screen, click Table Settings and select the toggle to turn the option on or off.
Core Settings Typeahead Table Settings

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Configure suggestions

This section details the steps to configure and manage typeahead suggestions.

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Configure Included suggestions

To configure a single Included typeahead suggestion, complete the following actions:
  • To add an entry, access the Typeahead screen and click Included > +Add. Enter the term and press Enter. Then, click Publish to activate the changes on your site.
  • To edit an existing entry, click the entry, enter the changes, and then, click Publish to activate the changes on your site.
All custom typeahead terms are persistent and must be manually excluded or deleted. However, to ensure a suggested term on the Included list is not replaced by another term when the hourly regeneration adds the next top 1000 terms, toggle the Persistent field to on. In addition, editing a suggested term sets the Persistent field to on.
Other actions to manage individual suggestions
To discard edits to an existing entry, select the entry and click Discard.
To edit more than one Included typeahead suggestion at a time, complete the following steps:In the Typeahead screen, hold the pointer over each entry you want to select and click the checkbox. To deselect all of the entries you have selected, click Deselect.
To select all of the entries, hold the pointer over the Terms header and select the checkbox. All of the suggestions are selected.
Core Settings Typeahead edit multiple entries
The following sections detail how to exclude, delete, or deselect the selected entries.
To move the selected entries from the Included list to the Excluded list, click Exclude.
If you move a suggested term to the Excluded list, the system will not generate that suggestion again, regardless of how many signals contain that term.
When you confirm the exclusion, the entries display in a soft exclude status.To finalize the move to the Excluded list, click Publish.
If you do not click Publish, the soft exclude status is removed when you refresh the screen, and the entries are restored to the Included list.

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Configure Excluded suggestions

Excluding a term blocks the term and related terms from being suggested. For example, if you exclude “dog”, the terms “dog house” and “dog food” are also excluded, but “doghouse” is not excluded. You might want to exclude certain keywords from typeahead for several reasons:
  • Frequently searched terms, such as “sale,” might dominate typeahead if not excluded, reducing variety in suggestions.
  • Filter out generic terms such as “info” or “product” that provide little user intent and might not help guide the user to meaningful content.
  • Exclude typeahead suggestions that do not support business goals, such as low-value queries or terms that distract from high-intent, conversion-focused results.
Core Settings Typeahead screen
To manage Excluded typeahead suggestions: The only actions you can perform on the Excluded list are to add or delete entries. You cannot move excluded items to the Included list. To change a term from Excluded to Included, you must delete it from the Excluded list and then add it to the Included list.
To configure a single Excluded typeahead suggestion, complete the following steps:In the Typeahead screen, click Excluded > +Add. Enter the term and press Enter. Then click Publish to activate that term for use on your site.Other actions to manage individual suggestions
To discard edits to an existing entry, select the entry and click Discard.
To edit more than one Excluded typeahead suggestion at a time, complete the following steps:In the Typeahead screen, hold the pointer over each entry you want to select and click the checkbox. To deselect all of the entries you have selected, click Deselect.
To select all of the entries, hold the pointer over the Terms header and select the checkbox. All of the suggestions are selected.
Core Settings Typeahead edit multiple excluded entries
The following section details how to delete the selected entries.
To delete multiple entries, hold the pointer over each entry, click the checkbox, and then click Delete.When you confirm the deletion, the entries display in a soft delete status.To finalize the deletion, click Publish.
If you do not click Publish, the soft delete status is removed when you refresh the screen, and the entries are restored to the list.