You can also review our documentation here https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/getting-started/neuralsearch/ on getting started with NeuralSearch.
Broadly, you'll want to ensure that 1) You are on the right plan 2) You have enabled NeuralSearch 3) You've configured your searchable attributes 3) You are sending events, 4) The data structure of your record is a good use case for NeuralSearch 5) Your use case doesn't require use of any of the known limitations.
Plan
Check that you are on either Elevate or Elevate Ecomm
Index settings
Enable NeuralSearch using this guide https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/getting-started/neuralsearch/#set-up-neuralsearch
Data structure
You should also ensure your search settings and configurations are well configured as in a keyword search index -- review our guides for configuring searchable attributes here https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/managing-results/must-do/searchable-attributes/ and our guide for configuring relevance here: https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/managing-results/relevance-overview/.
This ensures that for cases where a query does not yet have a semantic score https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/getting-started/neuralsearch/#semantic-score, the keyword score is still relevant.
Here's an example of a record structure and settings that would work with NeuralSearch:
NeuralSearch is not the best solution for search implementations that only search on SKUs or other exact matches.
Events
- Are events implemented? See https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/getting-started/neuralsearch/#prerequisites-for-neuralsearch. The requirements for the number of events may change, but the latest information can be found in that documentation.
- Did you use a guide like this one: https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/sending-events/guides/plan/
- Are your events valid?
- Use the debugger https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/sending-events/guides/validate/#events-debugger to assess whether or not your events are valid. Valid events will be green like this:
- Use the debugger https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/sending-events/guides/validate/#events-debugger to assess whether or not your events are valid. Valid events will be green like this:
You should also make sure that you aren't getting bot generated events. See our guide here
https://support.algolia.com/hc/en-us/articles/10154087058705 on how to deal with bots.
Limitations
There are currently some feature differences and limitations, including:
- Multi-region DSN is not currently supported
- The index size is limited to 100 GB
- The application size is limited to 1 TB
- English is currently the only supported language
- You cannot use the deleteBy operation https://www.algolia.com/doc/api-reference/api-methods/delete-by/. Use the delete method instead, which is significantly more performant.
- Custom dictionaries are not currently available
- Real time logs are not currently available
- Vault https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/security/algolia-vault/ is not currently available
- Not currently HIPPA compliant https://support.algolia.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406981949969-Is-Algolia-HIPAA-compliant-
- There are some internal indexing differences