Inside the Algolia Engine: Highlighting & UX | Algolia

Visually highlighting search results is crucial for a great user experience, especially when advanced processing like synonyms and typo tolerance are applied. There are three main ways to implement highlighting: using the original query tokens, splitting the query into alternative phrases, or using an external highlighter. Algolia's engine uses the third approach, which involves keeping all matched terms for each record in a very efficient manner. The highlighter plays a significant role in user experience by providing information on how well a search result matches the query and highlighting relevant attributes. This helps users quickly understand why a particular result was displayed and makes it easier to choose the most appropriate one.