Ordinary site search matches words. A visitor who types “cheap place to stay near the airport” finds nothing if your page says “budget hotel, 10 minutes from the terminal”. AI search closes that gap by comparing meaning.
Here is how it works in simple terms, where it goes wrong, and how to ask Uttra to add it to your site.
AI search understands what a visitor means, not only the exact words they type, and can answer in a sentence with links to your pages. Add it when your normal search box returns empty results for reasonable questions.
Keyword search versus meaning search
Keyword search is fast, predictable and cheap, and it is still right for exact things like product codes and names. Meaning search converts your pages and the visitor’s question into numbers that capture topic, then returns the closest pages. The best sites combine both.
What gets indexed
The search can only find what you give it: pages, products, FAQs, articles, price lists. Decide what belongs in the index, and re-index when content changes so answers do not go stale.
- Index public content only; keep private pages and admin data out.
- Store a title, a short excerpt and the link for each item.
- Re-run indexing when you add or edit pages.
Arabic details that decide quality
Arabic search needs care: diacritics, alef and hamza variants, ta marbuta, and Arabic and English product names mixed together. Normalise the text, then test with the spellings your visitors really use, including Gulf dialect words and Arabizi.
If you show a generated answer, base it only on retrieved pages and show the source links. When nothing relevant is found, say so instead of guessing, and offer a contact option.
Measure, then improve
Log the searches that returned nothing or that visitors abandoned. That list is free market research: it shows missing pages, wrong wording and products people expected. Review it monthly and fix the top ten.
A prompt you can paste: “Add a smart search box to the header of my store. It should understand questions in Arabic and English, show the three best matching products or pages with images, and say ‘no results’ with a WhatsApp link if nothing matches. Log every search so I can review them.”