Search Insights

Search Insights lets you report click, conversion and view metrics using the Algolia Insights API.

Table of Contents

• Getting started
  • Browser
  • Node.js
• Use cases
  • Search (Click Analytics and A/B testing)
  • Personalization
• Examples
• Contributing
• License

Cookie usage

You're looking at the documentation of search-insights v2, which is the new major version. (Click here for v1.x documentation.)

v2 introduces a breaking change which is useCookie being false by default. If it's false, search-insights doesn't generate anonymous userToken. It means no event will be sent until setUserToken is explicitly called.

Payload validation

Since v2.0.4, search-insights no longer validates event payloads. You can visit https://algolia.com/events/debugger instead.

Getting started

Are you using Google Tag Manager in your app? We provide a custom template to ease the integration.

Browser

1. Load the library

The Search Insights library can be either loaded via jsDelivr CDN or directly bundled with your application. We recommend loading the library by adding the snippet below to all pages where you wish to track search analytics.

1<script>
2var ALGOLIA_INSIGHTS_SRC = "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/search-insights@2.2.1";
3
4!function(e,a,t,n,s,i,c){e.AlgoliaAnalyticsObject=s,e[s]=e[s]||function(){
5(e[s].queue=e[s].queue||[]).push(arguments)},i=a.createElement(t),c=a.getElementsByTagName(t)[0],
6i.async=1,i.src=n,c.parentNode.insertBefore(i,c)
7}(window,document,"script",ALGOLIA_INSIGHTS_SRC,"aa");
8</script>

2. Initialize the library

1aa('init', {
2  appId: 'APP_ID',
3  apiKey: 'SEARCH_API_KEY',
4});
5
6// Optional: set the analytics user ID
7aa('setUserToken', 'USER_ID');

Option	Type	Default	Description
appId	string	None (required)	The identifier of your Algolia application
apiKey	string	None (required)	The search API key of your Algolia application
userHasOptedOut	boolean	false	Whether to exclude users from analytics
region	'de' | 'us'	Automatic	The DNS server to target
useCookie	boolean	false	Whether to use cookie in browser environment. The anonymous user token will not be set if false. When useCookie is false and setUserToken is not called yet, sending events will throw errors because there is no user token to attach to the events.
cookieDuration	number	15552000000 (6 months)	The cookie duration in milliseconds
userToken	string	undefined (optional)	Initial userToken. When given, anonymous userToken will not be set.

Note for Require.js users

When using Require.js, the default UMD build might conflict and throw with a "Mismatched anonymous define() modules" message. This is a known Require.js issue.

To work around this problem and ensure you capture all interactions occurring before the library is done loading, change ALGOLIA_INSIGHTS_SRC to point to the IIFE build, and load it via a <script> tag.

1<script>
2var ALGOLIA_INSIGHTS_SRC = "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/search-insights@2.0.2/dist/search-insights.iife.min.js";
3
4!function(e,a,t,n,s,i,c){e.AlgoliaAnalyticsObject=s,e[s]=e[s]||function(){
5(e[s].queue=e[s].queue||[]).push(arguments)},i=a.createElement(t),c=a.getElementsByTagName(t)[0],
6i.async=1,i.src=n,c.parentNode.insertBefore(i,c)
7}(window,document,"script",ALGOLIA_INSIGHTS_SRC,"aa");
8</script>

Node.js

(Node.js >= 8.16.0 required)

1. Install the library

Insights library can be used on the backend as a Node.js module.

1npm install search-insights
2# or
3yarn add search-insights

2. Initialize the library

1const aa = require('search-insights');
2
3aa('init', {
4  appId: 'APPLICATION_ID',
5  apiKey: 'SEARCH_API_KEY'
6});

Add userToken

On the Node.js environment, unlike the browser environment, userToken must be specified when sending any event.

1aa('clickedObjectIDs', {
2  userToken: 'USER_ID',
3  // ...
4});

Customize the client

If you want to customize the way to send events, you can create a custom Insights client.

1// via ESM
2import { createInsightsClient } from "search-insights";
3// OR in commonJS
4const { createInsightsClient } = require("search-insights");
5// OR via the UMD
6const createInsightsClient = window.AlgoliaAnalytics.createInsightsClient;
7
8function requestFn(url, data) {
9  const serializedData = JSON.stringify(data);
10  const { protocol, host, path } = require("url").parse(url);
11  const options = {
12    protocol,
13    host,
14    path,
15    method: "POST",
16    headers: {
17      "Content-Type": "application/json",
18      "Content-Length": serializedData.length
19    }
20  };
21
22  const { request: nodeRequest } =
23    url.indexOf("https://") === 0 ? require("https") : require("http");
24  const req = nodeRequest(options);
25
26  req.on("error", error => {
27    console.error(error);
28  });
29
30  req.write(serializedData);
31  req.end();
32};
33
34const aa = createInsightsClient(requestFn);

Use cases

The Search Insights library supports both Search and Personalization Algolia features.

Search (Click Analytics and A/B testing)

Initialize

To enable click analytics, the search parameter clickAnalytics must be set to true. This tells the Algolia engine to return a queryID on each search request.

1const searchClient = algoliasearch('APPLICATION_ID', 'SEARCH_API_KEY');
2const search = instantsearch({
3  indexName: 'INDEX_NAME',
4  searchClient,
5  searchParameters: {
6    clickAnalytics: true,
7  },
8});
9
10function getQueryID() {
11  return search.helper.lastResults.queryID;
12}

Report a click event

1aa('clickedObjectIDsAfterSearch', {
2  index: 'INDEX_NAME',
3  eventName: 'Click item',
4  queryID: getQueryID(),
5  objectIDs: ['object1'],
6  positions: [42],
7});

Option	Type	Description
index	string	The name of the index related to the event
eventName	string	The name of the event
objectIDs	string[]	The list of IDs of the result that was clicked
positions	number[]	The list of the absolute positions of the HTML element that was clicked (1-based and not 0-based)
queryID	string	The queryID of the search sent from Algolia

Report a conversion event

1aa('convertedObjectIDsAfterSearch', {
2  index: 'INDEX_NAME',
3  eventName: 'Add to basket',
4  queryID: getQueryID(),
5  objectIDs: ['object1'],
6});

Option	Type	Description
index	string	The name of the index related to the event
eventName	string	The name of the event
objectIDs	string[]	The list of IDs of the result that was clicked
queryID	string	The queryID of the search sent from Algolia

Personalization

Initialize

To enable personalization, the search parameter enablePersonalization must be set to true.

1const searchClient = algoliasearch('APPLICATION_ID', 'SEARCH_API_KEY');
2const search = instantsearch({
3  indexName: 'INDEX_NAME',
4  searchClient,
5  searchParameters: {
6    enablePersonalization: true,
7  },
8});

Access userToken

In cases where the userToken is generated, you need a way to access the userToken so that you can pass it to the searchClient.

1const searchClient = algoliasearch('APPLICATION_ID', 'SEARCH_API_KEY');
2
3aa('getUserToken', null, (err, userToken) => {
4  // for algoliasearch v3.x
5  searchClient.setExtraHeader('X-Algolia-UserToken', userToken);
6
7  // for algoliasearch v4.x
8  searchClient.transporter.headers['X-Algolia-UserToken'] = userToken;
9});

Listen to userToken change

If you want to attach a listener for userToken change, you can call onUserTokenChange.

1aa('onUserTokenChange', (userToken) => {
2  console.log("userToken has changed: ", userToken);
3});

onUserTokenChange accepts callback(required) and options(optional).

1aa('onUserTokenChange', callback, options);

Option	Type	Description
immediate	boolean	Fire the callback as soon as it's attached

1aa('init', { ..., useCookie: true });  // ← This sets an anonymous user token if cookie is available.
2
3aa('onUserTokenChange', (userToken) => {
4  console.log(userToken);  // prints out the anonymous user token
5}, { immediate: true });

1aa('init', { ... });
2aa('setUserToken', 'my-user-id-1');
3
4aa('onUserTokenChange', (userToken) => {
5  console.log(userToken); // prints out 'my-user-id-1'
6}, { immediate: true })

With immediate: true, onUserTokenChange will be immediately fired with the token which is set beforehand.

Report a click event

1aa('clickedObjectIDs', {
2  index: 'INDEX_NAME',
3  eventName: 'Add to basket',
4  objectIDs: ['object1'],
5});

Option	Type	Description
index	string	The name of the index related to the event
eventName	string	The name of the event
objectIDs	string[]	The list of IDs of the result that was clicked

1aa('clickedFilters', {
2  index: 'INDEX_NAME',
3  eventName: 'Filter on facet',
4  filters: ['brand:Apple'],
5});

Option	Type	Description
index	string	The name of the index related to the event
eventName	string	The name of the event
filters	string[]	The list of filters that was clicked as '${attr}${op}${value}'

Report a conversion event

1aa('convertedObjectIDs', {
2  index: 'INDEX_NAME',
3  eventName: 'Add to basket',
4  objectIDs: ['object1'],
5});

Option	Type	Description
index	string	The name of the index related to the event
eventName	string	The name of the event
objectIDs	string[]	The list of IDs of the result that was clicked

1aa('convertedFilters', {
2  index: 'INDEX_NAME',
3  eventName: 'Filter on facet',
4  filters: ['brand:Apple'],
5});

Option	Type	Description
index	string	The name of the index related to the event
eventName	string	The name of the event
filters	string[]	The list of filters that was clicked as '${attr}${op}${value}'

Report a view event

1aa('viewedObjectIDs', {
2  index: 'INDEX_NAME',
3  eventName: 'Add to basket',
4  objectIDs: ['object1'],
5});

Option	Type	Description
index	string	The name of the index related to the event
eventName	string	The name of the event
objectIDs	string[]	The list of IDs of the result that was clicked

1aa('viewedFilters', {
2  index: 'INDEX_NAME',
3  eventName: 'Filter on facet',
4  filters: ['brand:Apple'],
5});

Option	Type	Description
index	string	The name of the index related to the event
eventName	string	The name of the event
filters	string[]	The list of filters that was clicked as '${attr}${op}${value}'

Examples

The following examples assume that the Search Insights library is loaded.

• InstantSearch.js
• AlgoliaSearch Helper

Contributing

To run the examples and the code, you need to run two separate commands:

• yarn dev runs webpack and the Node.js server
• yarn build:dev runs Rollup in watch mode

To release, go on master (git checkout master) and use:

1yarn run release

It will create a pull request for the next release. When it's reviewed, approved and merged, then CircleCI will automatically publish it to npm.

License

Search Insights is MIT licensed.