Elasticsearch makes searching faster and better, but not only that!

1. Faster and scalable content presentation.
2. More relevant search results in your search engine.
3. Offer search results based on relevance. This is useful for intelligent product suggestions on webshops.
4. Take into account typos, stop words, synonyms, and auto-complete.
5. Index different types of data, even PDFs.

You can install the Elastic Server on your website. An index of your (web) database is then created on your server. An index is a large text file with all relevant data. With the help of an index, you can search data in a database faster. This is certainly the case with larger databases of news articles, performances, or products. The index ensures that the content and location of your records is (periodically) recorded based on the fields that are relevant to you. The next time a visitor to your site requests this information, the Elastic index will be able to find it immediately. Extracting information from Elasticsearch is therefore many times faster than filtering directly from the database every time.

Calendar & Filtering
For example, we have integrated Elasticsearch into the new platform of the cultural institutions in Alkmaar, including Theater de Vest. For these sites, the performance lists are very important. The agenda, genre lists, and news itemsare linked to relevant information from planning and ticketing software with the help of Elastic. In addition, you can quickly filter by genre or search terms via the search engine and pages are quickly presented on the website. Furthermore, with the help of the index, an infinite scroll has been integrated on the agenda pages. As a result, new information is constantly added to the calendar as you scroll, instead of a pagination where you have to click on the next 10 performances.

Publication database
Another example where we have integrated Elasticsearch is the Netherlands Cancer Institute. The NKI website contains more than 6000 publications which are linked to the website via an external publication database. Here, too, the Elastic index file feeds the search function in the publications at lightning speed.

Elasticsearch is relevant for anyone with a website that has a lot of data and wants to filter, search and present it quickly. In addition, Elastic provides a buffer: the data is always stored on the server, even when the connection to the underlying database is delayed.

This tip is part of Basic Orange's series of practical online knowledge tips . Stay informed of all developments via our Facebook or LinkedIn channel.