With the advent of the internet, the search got added to the basic needs of human beings. Google made a breakthrough in the search using their PageRank Algorithm. Search option became the most prominent component of almost every website. And then the business needs started going beyond basic search giving rise to searching algorithms and products such as Lucene And Solr. Going beyond these two, Algolia provides search as a service with highly relevant, contextualized and super fast results to businesses across the globe.
What is Algolia?
Algolia offers search as a product through SaaS (Software-As-A-Service) model. Customers upload their data via RESTful JSON API to Algolia servers. The data is then processed, indexed and made available to the client websites via REST APIs. The client library is available in several languages including Python, PHP, Java, Scala etc.
Key Features
- Search results in milliseconds
- Distributed search network allowing same response time across the globe.
- Horizontal scaling enables Algolia to add infrastructure as per the need.
- Several DNS providers with good AnyCast network
- Analytics relevant to search including search queries with no results; most searched queries etc.
- As-you-type suggestions
- Personalized Shopping Search for e-commerce websites including filters and facets
- Global Language support including Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic.
- Full list can be found here
Alternatives to Algolia
Lucene and Solr are most common search solutions in use for long. In recent years, AWS ElasticSearch has also made its foray into search domain. Algolia claims to have 200x faster search as compared to AWS ElasticSearch.
The main advantage that Algolia enjoys is that they have control over the eco-system end-to-end. They have fine-tuned their hardware including OS to perform best for search functionality. Their locations across the globe have been chosen so as to have maximum coverage and minimal latency for the end users. Other search solutions lack on these aspects. Additionally, Lucene and Solr do not work as per the business context out of the box and they need a lot of fine-tuning.
Algolia has gained good ground with some marquee customers on their list including ProductHunt, Medium, Strava, Twitch, and Bla Bla Car.
Related Links
Related Keywords
Lucene, Solr, AWS ElasticSearch