Website Search Updates

What Changed

Site search on stlouis-mo.gov has been overhauled to use a custom implementation powered by Elasticsearch, an open source full-text search engine. 

This applies both to the general site-wide search box at the top-right corner of each page, and to the ordinance search page. We will be adding new focused search features over time. 

Benefits

Moving to a custom search implementation allows the stlouis-mo.gov web team and content contributors to have better control over how and when City service information shows up in search results. This change will result in more accurate and timely results, and gives us the opportunity to provide more rich content in search results.

Feedback

We have been testing the search engine behind the scenes, and while we think it's working well, it's possible that we've missed something. 

If you run into trouble with searching the site, or have suggestions for us, please leave feedback at the bottom of the search results page or contact the web team directly.

We will continue to monitor both search performance and your feedback, and will tweak things as needed.