Improve Your App's Search Results with Auto-Tuning

Isa Torres, Ethan Steininger5 min read • Published Oct 20, 2021 • Updated Aug 14, 2024

Atlas Search

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Historically, the only way to improve your app’s search query relevance is through manual intervention. For example, you can introduce score boosting to multiply a base relevance score in the presence of particular fields. This ensures that searches where a key present in some fields weigh higher than others. This is, however, fixed by nature. The results are dynamic but the logic itself doesn’t change.

The following project will showcase how to leverage synonyms to create a feedback loop that is self-tuning, in order to deliver incrementally more relevant search results to your users—all without complex machine learning models!

Example

We have a food search application where a user searches for “Romanian Food.” Assuming that we’re logging every user's clickstream data (their step-by-step interaction with our application), we can take a look at this “sequence” and compare it to other results that have yielded a strong CTA (call-to-action): a successful checkout.

Another user searched for “German Cuisine” and that had a very similar clickstream sequence. Well, we can build a script that analyzes both these users’ (and other users’) clickstreams, identify similarities, we can tell the script to append it to a synonyms document that contains “German,” “Romanian,” and other more common cuisines, like “Hungarian.”

Here’s a workflow of what we’re looking to accomplish:

Tutorial

Step 1: Log user’s clickstream activity

In our app tier, as events are fired, we log them to a clickstreams collection, like:

Code Snippet

In this simplified list of events, we can conclude that {"session_id":"1"} searched for “romanian food,” which led to a higher conversion rate, payment_success, compared to {"session_id":"2"}, who searched “hungarian food” and stalled after the add_to_cart event. You can import this data yourself using sample_data.json.

Let’s prepare the data for our search_tuner script.

Step 2: Create a view that groups by session_id, then filters on the presence of searches

By the way, it’s no problem that only some documents have a metadata field. Our $group operator can intelligently identify the ones that do vs don’t.

Code Snippet

[
    # first we sort by timestamp to get everything in the correct sequence of events,
    # as that is what we'll be using to draw logical correlations
    {
        '$sort': {
            'timestamp': 1
        }
    },
    # next, we'll group by a unique session_id, include all the corresponding events, and begin
    # the filter for determining if a search_query exists
    {
        '$group': {
            '_id': '$session_id',
            'events': {
                '$push': '$$ROOT'
            },
            'isSearchQueryPresent': {
                '$sum': {
                    '$cond': [
                        {
                            '$eq': [
                                '$event_id', 'search_query'
                            ]
                        }, 1, 0
                    ]
                }
            }
        }
    },
    # we hide session_ids where there is no search query
    # then create a new field, an array called searchQuery, which we'll use to parse
    {
        '$match': {
            'isSearchQueryPresent': {
                '$gte': 1
            }
        }
    },
    {
        '$unset': 'isSearchQueryPresent'
    },
    {
        '$set': {
            'searchQuery': '$events.metadata.search_value'
        }
    }
]

Let’s create the view by building the query, then going into Compass and adding it as a new collection called group_by_session_id_and_search_query:

Here’s what it will look like:

Code Snippet

[
  {
    "session_id": "1",
    "events": [
      {
        "event_id": "search_query",
        "search_value": "romanian food"
      },
      {
        "event_id": "add_to_cart",
        "context": {
          "cuisine": "eastern european cuisine"
        }
      },
      {
        "event_id": "checkout"
      },
      {
        "event_id": "payment_success"
      }
    ],
    "searchQuery": "romanian food"
  }, {
    "session_id": "2",
    "events": [
      {
        "event_id": "search_query",
        "search_value": "hungarian food"
      },
      {
        "event_id": "add_to_cart",
        "context": {
          "cuisine": "eastern european cuisine"
        }
      },
      {
        "event_id": "checkout"
      }
    ],
    "searchQuery": "hungarian food"
  },
  {
    "session_id": "3",
    "events": [
      {
        "event_id": "search_query",
        "search_value": "italian food"
      },
      {
        "event_id": "add_to_cart",
        "context": {
          "cuisine": "western european cuisine"
        }
      }
    ],
    "searchQuery": "sad food"
  }
]

Step 3: Build a scheduled job that compares similar clickstreams and pushes the resulting synonyms to the synonyms collection

Code Snippet

// Provide a success indicator to determine which session we want to
// compare any incomplete sessions with
const successIndicator = "payment_success"

//  what percentage similarity between two sets of click/event streams
//  we'd accept to be determined as similar enough to produce a synonym
//  relationship
const acceptedConfidence = .9

//  boost the confidence score when the following values are present
//  in the eventstream
const eventBoosts = {
  successIndicator: .1
}

/**
 * Enrich sessions with a flattened event list to make comparison easier.
 * Determine if the session is to be considered successful based on the success indicator.
 * @param {*} eventList List of events in a session.
 * @returns {any} Calculated values used to determine if an incomplete session is considered to
 * be related to a successful session.
 */
const enrichEvents = (eventList) => {
  return {
    eventSequence: eventList.map(event => { return event.event_id }).join(';'),
    isSuccessful: eventList.some(event => { return event.event_id === successIndicator })
  }
}

/**
 * De-duplicate common tokens in two strings
 * @param {*} str1
 * @param {*} str2
 * @returns Returns an array with the provided strings with the common tokens removed
 */
const dedupTokens = (str1, str2) => {
  const splitToken = ' '
  const tokens1 = str1.split(splitToken)
  const tokens2 = str2.split(splitToken)
  const dupedTokens = tokens1.filter(token => { return tokens2.includes(token)});
  const dedupedStr1 = tokens1.filter(token => { return !dupedTokens.includes(token)});
  const dedupedStr2 = tokens2.filter(token => { return !dupedTokens.includes(token)});

return [ dedupedStr1.join(splitToken), dedupedStr2.join(splitToken) ]
}

// At this point we can assume that the sequence of events is the same, so we can
  // use the same index when comparing events
  for(let i = 0; i < incompleteSession.events.length; i++) {
    // if we have a context, let's compare the kv pairs in the context of
    // the incomplete session with the successful session
    if(incompleteSession.events[i].context){
      const eventWithContext = incompleteSession.events[i]
      const contextKeys = Object.keys(eventWithContext.context)

try {
        for(const key of contextKeys) {
          if(successfulSession.events[i].context[key] !== eventWithContext.context[key]){
            // context is not the same, not a match, let's get out of here
            contextMatch = false
            break;
          }
         }
      } catch (error) {
        contextMatch = false;
        console.log(`Something happened, probably successful session didn't have a context for an event.`);
      }
    }
  }

// Update results
  if(contextMatch){
    console.log(`VALIDATED`);
    const synonyms = dedupTokens(successfulSession.searchQuery, incompleteSession.searchQuery, true)
    const existingMatchingResultIndex = findMatchingIndex(synonyms, results)
    if(existingMatchingResultIndex >= 0){
      const synonymSet = new Set([...synonyms, ...results[existingMatchingResultIndex].synonyms])
      results[existingMatchingResultIndex].synonyms = Array.from(synonymSet)
    }
    else{
      const result = {
        "mappingType": "equivalent",
        "synonyms": synonyms
      }
      results.push(result)
    }

}
  else{
    console.log(`NOT A MATCH`);
  }

return results;
}

/**
 * Compare the event sequence of incomplete and successful sessions
 * @param {*} successfulSessions
 * @param {*} incompleteSessions
 * @returns
 */
const compareLists = (successfulSessions, incompleteSessions) => {
  let results = []
  for(const successfulSession of successfulSessions) {
    for(const incompleteSession of incompleteSessions) {
      // if the event sequence is the same, let's inspect these sessions
      // to validate that they are a match
      if(successfulSession.enrichments.eventSequence.includes(incompleteSession.enrichments.eventSequence)){
        processMatch(successfulSession, incompleteSession, results)
      }
    }
  }
  return results
}

const processSessions = (sessions) => {
  // console.log(`Processing the following list:`, JSON.stringify(sessions, null, 2));
  // enrich sessions for processing
  const enrichedSessions = sessions.map(session => {
    return { ...session, enrichments: enrichEvents(session.events)}
  })
  // separate successful and incomplete sessions
  const successfulEvents = enrichedSessions.filter(session => { return session.enrichments.isSuccessful})
  const incompleteEvents = enrichedSessions.filter(session => { return !session.enrichments.isSuccessful})

return compareLists(successfulEvents, incompleteEvents);
}

/**
 * Main Entry Point
 */
const main = () => {
  const results = processSessions(eventsBySession);
  console.log(`Results:`, results);
}

main();

module.exports = processSessions;

Run the script yourself.

Step 4: Enhance our search query with the newly appended synonyms

Code Snippet

See the synonyms tutorial.

Next Steps

There you have it, folks. We’ve taken raw data recorded from our application server and put it to use by building a feedback that encourages positive user behavior.

By measuring this feedback loop against your KPIs, you can build a simple A/B test against certain synonyms and user patterns to optimize your application!

Rate this tutorial

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Example
Tutorial
Next Steps

Atlas

Improve Your App's Search Results with Auto-Tuning

Example

Tutorial

Step 1: Log user’s clickstream activity

Step 2: Create a view that groups by session_id, then filters on the presence of searches

Step 3: Build a scheduled job that compares similar clickstreams and pushes the resulting synonyms to the synonyms collection

Step 4: Enhance our search query with the newly appended synonyms

Next Steps

Related

Comparing NLP Techniques for Scalable Product Search

Building a Scalable Media Management Back End: Integrating Node.js, Azure Blob Storage, and MongoDB

Adding Autocomplete To Your NextJS Applications With Atlas Search

The MongoDB Atlas Sample Datasets

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