Precise, reliable results for every search

Hi, I’m Davila. In this video, I’ll give you an overview of Funnelback, the search engine within Squiz DXP, and walk you through several of its features. You’ll see how it helps users discover content more effectively across your digital platforms.

Managing search in Funnelback

Funnelback search is managed through a browser-based dashboard, accessible from desktop or mobile.

From here, you can configure search results pages and manage the index for each of your data sources.

Let’s start by looking at how to add a data source.

Funnelback includes a range of pre-built data source types, including websites, databases, directories, and social media platforms. This allows you to make all of your content searchable, regardless of where it lives or what format it takes.

In this example, we’ll crawl and index a website. Funnelback guides you through the process step by step. You enter a name for the data source, paste in the website URL, and then choose whether to exclude any content. For example, you might decide not to crawl events pages or certain non-HTML file types.

You can then run a full update immediately so the content is indexed and ready to use.

Once your content has been indexed, you can add the data source to an existing search package—or create a new one if needed.

Configuring the search experience

Next, you choose the search results page you want to edit and display your data on.

From here, you can update the template, adjust page configurations, or review analytics. In this example, we’ll search for “engineering” to see how the results page works.

Squiz provides ready-made search interface templates that help you get started quickly. These include built-in capabilities such as spelling correction, word expansion, accurate result ordering, and more.

You can also configure the interface to segment content into tabs, making it easier for users to navigate across different content types. Filters can be added to refine results based on metadata such as date, format, or other indexed attributes.

Search results can also be displayed differently depending on the content type. For example, a website page may appear differently from a video result or a course listing, based on the metadata available.

If users don’t find what they need on the first page of results, Funnelback can also suggest related searches. These are dynamically generated topics connected to the original query, helping users refine or expand their search more quickly.

Autocomplete can also be configured to provide real-time suggestions as users type. These suggestions can be simple keywords or richer result previews, such as people, programs, or other specific content types.

Users can also save results they’re interested in and return to them later using shortlist functionality. Search history is also retained, allowing them to revisit previous searches and clicks.

Search analytics

Funnelback includes built-in search analytics with every search experience you create.

This gives you instant visibility into user behavior and helps you understand what people are searching for.

You can review monthly summaries showing searches, clicks, and click-through rates. You can also dive deeper into specific queries to identify the most common search terms.

Search analytics also highlights pain points, such as searches that return zero results. This helps you understand what users are looking for but can’t currently find.

You can see which results are being clicked most often, helping you decide which pages need to stay current and relevant. If you’ve configured search filters, you can also track how frequently they’re being used.

A locations map shows where your search users are coming from, based on IP data, and these reports can be exported if needed.

Trend alerts notify you when there are sudden spikes in search activity. This helps you identify emerging topics quickly and take action, whether that means adding synonyms, promoting a result, or reviewing what users are seeing for a particular query.

Together, these insights help you improve the search experience over time and increase user satisfaction.

Synonyms

A common search challenge is that different audiences use different language.

Instead of changing your content to match every possible term, Funnelback allows you to create synonyms on the fly so users still find the right information.

This is especially useful for acronyms, regional differences in language, or common misspellings that aren’t covered by standard spelling corrections.

For example, you might map “coding” to “programming” and “computing.” Before publishing the synonym, the search results may only return content directly related to coding. After publishing it, the results expand to include programming and computing content as well.

This ensures users receive the right information regardless of the language they use.

Curator

When you need to adjust search results quickly without changing the source content, Funnelback’s Curator tool gives you full control over what users see.

Both technical and non-technical users can use it to reorder results or display specific content for particular queries.

For example, you might create a rule so that whenever someone searches for “engineering,” a specific engineering course appears at the top of the results.

You can also add a call to action above the results—for example, highlighting engineering scholarships with a link and custom message. This call to action can point to any page, whether it’s in the search index or not.

Curator makes it easy to control the search experience without technical overhead or lengthy training.

Tuning

One of Funnelback’s key differentiators is the ability to tune the ranking algorithm.

Every organization has its own content structure and business priorities, so a one-size-fits-all ranking model often isn’t enough.

Funnelback provides a non-technical interface that lets you create a tuning set by defining keywords and the URLs that should rank highly for them.

For example, you might create training data for the keyword “events” by identifying the most relevant pages you want returned.

Once enough training data is in place, you can run a tuning process. Funnelback analyzes features such as metadata, dates, and URL structures to determine what ranking signals matter most for your organization.

After the tuning run, you’ll receive an overview of how much your search relevance could improve if the updated ranking model is applied.

This is especially useful when you want to improve overall search performance rather than manually curating individual results.

Summary

This is just a snapshot of what you can do with Squiz Search and its underlying engine, Funnelback.

From indexing content and building tailored search experiences to analytics, synonyms, curation, and ranking optimization, Funnelback gives you the tools to create a more useful and effective search experience for your users.

Book a demo with our team to explore more features and see how Squiz Search can support your digital experience goals.