Search 50,000+ records in literally the blink of an eye

Classified listing websites are hugely reliant on search. An extensive selection of ads is of little use without a fast and accurate search-engine to help users discover relevant ads.

The first part of this two-part session describes the semi-decoupled, Drupal-based, architecture of a search experience Annertech built for a major Irish used-car classified listings website--a search so fast that it rendered parts of the client’s design and UX obsolete before they could even be built. We’ll delve into the way we used three specific open-source tools, Drupal, Typesense, and Algolia Instantsearch to build the content-repository, search index, and search UX for carsireland.ie.

The second part of the session features an overview of the search engine at the heart of the site’s search experience--Typesense--by one of its creators. We’ll talk about how Typesense compares to other search engines like Algolia and ElasticSearch, benchmarks and interesting use-cases for it.