This week the site search market got a new player as Adobe has introduced Adobe Search&Promote. The site search and merchandising application aims to help marketers anticipate visitor search intent and promote the most relevant products and content across desktop and mobile website searches.
The application, which is powered by Omniture technology, seems to provide marketers with a lot of control, including metrics-based relevance and personalization. Adobe is touting the application's ability to handle millions of pages and products and high search traffic volume, removing concerns of hardware procurement and provisioning, and offers real-time indexing to ensure visitors have access to the most up-to-date content.
The solution also features built-in analytics provided by Adobe SiteCatalyst, (again powered by Omniture) which will enable marketers to automate and tune search and ranking results based on key metrics such as conversion rate, page views and customer ratings. This also enables businesses to monitor conversion rates from search terms and the paths visitors take to understand what visitors are finding and not finding in order to improve their site experience.
Perhaps most exciting about the solution is its ability to integrate with other applications within the Adobe marketing suite. For example, Search&Promote user can test various "search experiences" with Adobe Test&Target, provide product or content recommendations using Adobe recommendations (the "people who searched for this, bought that" algorithm, and what I find most interesting is the connection with Adobe Scene 7 which automates the delivery of "richer" product results through interactive zoom, 360-degree spin, alternative image sizes and more.