Which search should the help centre use?
Fictional sample. The options, numbers, and names below are demonstration data; replace them with the real question and its evidence before use.
Support leads choose one search approach for the help centre before the March content migration. Read the three options, then answer in the form at the end and export the answer for the platform team.
The question
Readers find the right article on the first search in 58% of sessions. The migration is the cheapest moment to change how search works.
The platform team can ship any one of the options below before the migration. The choice decides who maintains synonyms, how fast new articles become findable, and what the monthly bill is.
Three options
Keep keyword search
No new cost. Articles are findable within a minute of publishing. Synonyms stay a manual list that support edits.
Hosted semantic search
Best first-search rate in the pilot: 74%. New articles need up to an hour to index, and the bill grows with traffic.
Hybrid ranking
Keyword first, semantic re-ranking on top. 69% in the pilot, one more service for the platform team to run.
How the pilot measured first-search success
Two weeks of anonymised sessions, 4,100 searches, counted as a success when the reader opened an article and did not search again within five minutes.