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Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, the world has been abuzz with conversations and questions about AI. From dinner tables to board rooms, everyone is suddenly seeking to understand ways to leverage AI technology to improve their lives and bottom lines. As you consider incorporating AI into your business, one solution deserving consideration is Algolia's new NeuralSearch(TM).

Introducing AI-Powered NeuralSearch for your website

A few weeks ago, Algolia released NeuralSearch. They call it “the world’s most advanced AI search solution.” It’s a grand claim. It’s also one that’s hard to argue. NeuralSearch is an advanced, highly effective and efficient search solution combining vector and keyword search into a single response.

Algolia was already well-recognized for its API-first keyword search solution as the top provider of searches globally, second only to Google.  What’s so impressive about NeuralSearch is the AI vector search component that powers semantic or natural language search. (Shawn wrote about this and their innovative hashing technique that makes it all possible a few blog posts ago.) Vector search allows site visitors to search the way they think, getting them what they want, when they want it (even when they don’t know the keywords.) And, like all Aloglia products, it’s an out-of-the-box, composable solution that can easily plug into your website.

In some ways, upgrading your site’s search to NeuralSearch is like adding your own, custom ChatGPT to your website, but better. Here’s how:

It Learns Your Site Index

Like ChatGPT, NeuralSearch uses large language models (LLMs) to understand customer search queries. Whereas ChatGPT uses a massive amount of public data, NeuralSearch uses your own site index, automatically adjusting your website’s search experience as the index is updated. This is an important distinction, GPT-4 generally lacks knowledge of events that have occurred after September 2021, and does not learn from its experience. NeuralSearch, on the other hand, is influenced by your content. In other words, as you update your offerings, adding or removing products, services, or other content, your AI-powered search rapidly learns from these changes. NeuralSearch helps reduce the organizational maturity needed to benefit from Algolia’s most advanced features, a critical improvement that helps organizations get unstuck in their search maturity ladder. 

It Learns from User Interactions

ChatGPT’s contextual memory is finite, limiting its ability to learn from the conversation and influence future responses. With search, we want to remember user behaviors and influence future search experiences. Because NeuralSeach is based on learning algorithms, it can adjust to changing real-world conditions over time, leveraging AI to detect relationships among people, content, and data, as well as connections between user interests and current and past search queries.So, if you’re just wild about a particular brand or purchase new running shoes every spring, NeuralSearch can identify and learn from these preferences and trends and provide search results that are more relevant to you as a consumer. Importantly, you’re able to leverage all of the existing Algolia tools to further impact the user search based on business rules. This is huge. Of course, when it comes to search, relevancy is extremely important. The more relevant the search results, the lower the bounce rate, and the greater the click-throughs and conversions. This leads me to my next point.

It’s the Future of Search

In 2022, Accenture found that, at AI-savvy companies, the new technology already accounted for a third of all revenue generated. Furthermore, they predicted that AI-forward companies will “outperform their peers in achieving sustainability goals and improving customer experience.” AI is the future of business and, by extension, the future of search because it works. In fact, NeuralSearch customers have already been touting the benefits of its enhanced capabilities.* 

• Frasers Group says they saw a “~65 percent drop in zero search results and up to 17 percent uplift in conversion rates”

• Retailer Everlane experienced a “9 percent increase in clickthrough rates and a 9 percent increase in [their] conversion rate” 

• Other benefits include “better [understanding] customer intent to improve…search relevance” (Best Buy Canada) and “spending less time on manual tasks such as creating synonyms to optimize search results” (Everlane)

Increased conversions, more customer insights, and greater efficiency sounds pretty great, right? But maybe the whole idea of AI makes you uncomfortable. To be fair, the news is not always good. It can be downright scary.However, remember that NeuralSearch is focused on improving particular user experiences and, in doing so, benefiting specific businesses. In a sense, that specificity and singularity of purpose provide built-in parameters and guardrails that make the broader concerns about AI not applicable. In summary, Algolia NeuralSearch is a powerful way to leverage AI to grow your business and stay competitive, and it does it by improving the customer experience. To learn how Algolia NeuralSearch can help your business, shoot us a message. We would love to chat.

*Source: Algolia