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Agents
Search agent
How the Search agent will work: results from your knowledge base as visitors type, short sourced answers to questions, and taking over your own search box.
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On this page
The Search agent replaces your site's search box with results as visitors type, from the same knowledge base as your other agents. When a visitor types a question, a short answer with the pages it comes from appears above the results.
What visitors will see
- Results as they type. A search window opens with the best pages of your site, one result per page, each with the sentence that matches best and the matching words in bold. Results update a moment after the visitor stops typing.
- A short answer to questions. When the query reads as a question, such as "how long does delivery take?", a short answer of a few sentences appears above the results, labeled as an AI answer and linked to the pages it is based on. When your pages don't answer the question, no answer is shown, only the results.
- Your own answers first. When you wrote a Q&A pair for the question, visitors see your answer as you wrote it.
- A way to keep going. "Ask the assistant" continues the search as a conversation in the chat panel (when Chat is on), and "See all results" opens your site's own search results page.
The search window works with the keyboard alone: arrow keys move through the results, Enter opens one, and Escape closes the window and returns to where the visitor was.
Set it up
Switch Search on
On the dashboard, open Search and switch on Search on this site. It needs the Starter plan or higher.
Check your search box
Search takes over your site's own search boxes, found with a CSS selector. The default, form[role=search] input, input[type=search], finds the search boxes most sites and WordPress themes have. To check it, open a page of your site with the search box, open the browser's developer console, paste the line the Search page shows and press Enter. A number of 1 or more means the selector finds your box.
If your search box uses other markup, enter its selector instead, for example #site-search input. Leave the field empty if you don't want your search box taken over.
Choose how search opens
Besides your search box, visitors can press Ctrl K (⌘ K on a Mac). Turn the shortcut off if your site already uses it for something else. You can also open search from your own button:
<button type="button" onclick="asdk('search')">Search</button>asdk("search", "delivery") opens search and runs that query, for example on your own search results page.
Short answers and your plan
Each AI answer a visitor sees counts toward your plan's monthly answers, like an answer in the chat. Results alone, and answers you wrote yourself as Q&A pairs, are not counted. To stop AI answers, turn off Answer questions above the results; answers you wrote as Q&A pairs still show above the results.
Learn what visitors look for
The Search page shows what visitors searched for in the last 7, 30 or 90 days:
- Searches and the click-through rate: the share of searches with results where the visitor opened one.
- Top searches, to see what people come to your site for.
- Searches without a good result: queries that found nothing or only weak matches. Use Add an answer to write a Q&A pair for it; Search and every other agent use it from then on. Dismiss hides a query until visitors miss it again.
A search counts once a visitor settles on it — they pause on the results, press Enter, open a result or close the window — so the letters typed on the way are not counted as searches.