Building a World-Class Search Experience with Vertex AI Search

Overview

A forward-thinking technology company engaged with us for a strategic project focused on revolutionizing their website’s search functionality. The core objective was to implement and optimize a new search platform using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Search to deliver a more intuitive and powerful search experience to their users. The project was structured as a collaborative consulting engagement designed to provide expert, hands-on assistance and empower their in-house technical team.

The Challenge

The client’s existing website search capabilities were falling short of modern user expectations for a sophisticated, “Google-quality” search experience. Users struggled to find relevant information quickly, leading to frustration and disengagement. Their technical team, while highly skilled, required specialized expertise in the niche area of AI-powered search to implement advanced features like faceted search, query autocompletion, and result promotion. The central challenge was to bridge this knowledge gap, enabling them to build a powerful and intelligent search engine without a lengthy and expensive learning curve.

Our Solution

We provided a focused consulting engagement that delivered a multi-faceted approach to expert, hands-on assistance on Vertex AI Search. This involved strategic guidance, best-practice workshops, and direct technical support to their team. We provided in-depth guidance on data preparation, ingestion, and search configuration, along with detailed documentation and support on implementing a range of advanced features, including:

• Faceted Search: We guided them in configuring filters for both structured and unstructured data, allowing users to easily navigate and drill down into large sets of search results by category, significantly improving discoverability.
• Autocomplete: We helped implement intelligent query autocompletion based on search history and document content, reducing user effort and guiding them towards relevant content more effectively.
• Serving Controls: We provided the expertise to create rules to boost or bury specific search results, enabling their business teams to promote key pages or new content in line with their strategic objectives.
• Advanced Website Indexing: We enabled more powerful search capabilities through advanced indexing techniques, unlocking sophisticated features like on-the-fly AI-powered summarization of search results and blended search across multiple data stores.

Impact

This engagement empowered the client’s technical team with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to build and manage a powerful, modern search engine on their website. By leveraging the full potential of Vertex AI Search, they can now offer their users a vastly improved search experience with more relevant results, advanced filtering capabilities, and a more intuitive interface. This has led to increased user engagement and satisfaction. More importantly, the project has equipped their team with the skills to independently manage and evolve their search platform, ensuring long-term success and reinforcing their brand as a user-centric and technologically advanced organization.