Algolia + MongoDB: Use-case and architecture | Algolia

The text discusses the implementation of a basic proof-of-concept search solution for real estate ecommerce sites using Algolia in combination with MongoDB. The author, Soma Osvay, explains that their client's webshops have seen an increase in listings due to new services and organic growth, which has highlighted the need for improved search capabilities. Poor search results were leading to a loss of revenue as customers left the websites after only a few unsuccessful searches. The current architecture is somewhat fractured with separate consumer-facing and admin-facing applications managed by different teams. MongoDB's on-premise instance supports Legacy Text search, which has limitations in searching across multiple fields and through significant textual content. ElasticSearch was considered but deemed too difficult to host and fine-tune, requiring extensive modifications to the application stack. Algolia emerged as a potential solution due to its quality SDKs, simplicity of integration, and minimal impact on backend code. The author plans to cover design specification, data ingestion, frontend implementation, and evaluation in subsequent articles.