Search by Algolia
AI-powered search: From keywords to conversations
ai

AI-powered search: From keywords to conversations

By now, everyone’s had the opportunity to experiment with AI tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney and ponder their inner ...

Chris Stevenson

Director, Product Marketing

Vector vs Keyword Search: Why You Should Care
ai

Vector vs Keyword Search: Why You Should Care

Search has been around for a while, to the point that it is now considered a standard requirement in many ...

Nicolas Fiorini

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

What is AI-powered site search?
ai

What is AI-powered site search?

With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies enabling services such as Alexa, Google search, and self-driving cars, the ...

John Stewart

VP Corporate Marketing

What is a B2B marketplace?
e-commerce

What is a B2B marketplace?

It’s no secret that B2B (business-to-business) transactions have largely migrated online. According to Gartner, by 2025, 80 ...

Vincent Caruana

Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager

3 strategies for B2B ecommerce growth: key takeaways from B2B Online - Chicago
e-commerce

3 strategies for B2B ecommerce growth: key takeaways from B2B Online - Chicago

Twice a year, B2B Online brings together industry leaders to discuss the trends affecting the B2B ecommerce industry. At the ...

Elena Moravec

Director of Product Marketing & Strategy

Deconstructing smart digital merchandising
e-commerce

Deconstructing smart digital merchandising

This is Part 2 of a series that dives into the transformational journey made by digital merchandising to drive positive ...

Benoit Reulier
Reshma Iyer

Benoit Reulier &

Reshma Iyer

The death of traditional shopping: How AI-powered conversational commerce changes everything
ai

The death of traditional shopping: How AI-powered conversational commerce changes everything

Get ready for the ride: online shopping is about to be completely upended by AI. Over the past few years ...

Aayush Iyer

Director, User Experience & UI Platform

What is B2C ecommerce? Models, examples, and definitions
e-commerce

What is B2C ecommerce? Models, examples, and definitions

Remember life before online shopping? When you had to actually leave the house for a brick-and-mortar store to ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

What are marketplace platforms and software? Why are they important?
e-commerce

What are marketplace platforms and software? Why are they important?

If you imagine pushing a virtual shopping cart down the aisles of an online store, or browsing items in an ...

Vincent Caruana

Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager

What is an online marketplace?
e-commerce

What is an online marketplace?

Remember the world before the convenience of online commerce? Before the pandemic, before the proliferation of ecommerce sites, when the ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

10 ways AI is transforming ecommerce
e-commerce

10 ways AI is transforming ecommerce

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just the stuff of scary futuristic movies; it’s recently burst into the headlines ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

AI as a Service (AIaaS) in the era of "buy not build"
ai

AI as a Service (AIaaS) in the era of "buy not build"

Imagine you are the CTO of a company that has just undergone a massive decade long digital transformation. You’ve ...

Sean Mullaney

CTO @Algolia

By the numbers: the ROI of keyword and AI site search for digital commerce
product

By the numbers: the ROI of keyword and AI site search for digital commerce

Did you know that the tiny search bar at the top of many ecommerce sites can offer an outsized return ...

Jon Silvers

Director, Digital Marketing

Using pre-trained AI algorithms to solve the cold start problem
ai

Using pre-trained AI algorithms to solve the cold start problem

Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly moved from hot topic to everyday life. Now, ecommerce businesses are beginning to clearly see ...

Etienne Martin

VP of Product

Introducing Algolia NeuralSearch
product

Introducing Algolia NeuralSearch

We couldn’t be more excited to announce the availability of our breakthrough product, Algolia NeuralSearch. The world has stepped ...

Bernadette Nixon

Chief Executive Officer and Board Member at Algolia

AI is eating ecommerce
ai

AI is eating ecommerce

The ecommerce industry has experienced steady and reliable growth over the last 20 years (albeit interrupted briefly by a global ...

Sean Mullaney

CTO @Algolia

Semantic textual similarity: a game changer for search results and recommendations
product

Semantic textual similarity: a game changer for search results and recommendations

As an ecommerce professional, you know the importance of providing a five-star search experience on your site or in ...

Vincent Caruana

Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager

What is hashing and how does it improve website and app search?
ai

What is hashing and how does it improve website and app search?

Hashing.   Yep, you read that right.   Not hashtags. Not golden, crisp-on-the-outside, melty-on-the-inside hash browns ...

Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

Looking for something?

facebookfacebooklinkedinlinkedintwittertwittermailmail

Are you able to easily find the information you need in order to do your job? Can you quickly access the right digital files without wasting too much time going down rat holes?

As businesses continue to digitize and the paperless office becomes a thing of the ancient past, it’s become increasingly important to master the art of knowledge and document management. Document indexing is what makes it all possible: the cog that powers information search and document retrieval in the digital world.

What is document indexing?

Document indexing is simply the process of applying labels and tags to documents so that they can easily be found when searching high-volume databases and indexes. Indexing is the search-engine equivalent of putting a colorful ribbon on your luggage, making it easier to spot your bag that looks like everyone else’s when you land. By tagging documents with relevant markers, you make it easier to find them again fast.

The point of this post

Do you know why the index finger was given its name?

The word index is derived from the Latin word indico, meaning to point out, indicate, or show. People use their index fingers to point at things.

Children can understand and perform pointing gestures at 9–12 months. And from that point on — pun intended — “indexing” is a simple but effective means of search and retrieval. For instance:

“Where are my sunglasses?”

“They are there. On your head.”

A brief history of document indexing

People reportedly started to index documents in the 15th century, following the advent of the printing press, as a mechanism for digging up information that was buried in hefty tomes.

Today, in the digital age, business users rely on document management systems such as SharePoint, Google Drive, and Adobe Document Cloud for document storage. Unfortunately, our index fingers can’t help us locate business knowledge that’s stored in the Cloud. But document indexing is still the framework and mechanism that helps business users locate or delightedly discover the right information. That’s crucial: in a highly competitive business landscape, the timely, accurate retrieval of indexed information matters.

Why is it important to (correctly) index documents?

When it comes to companies, being able to locate documents fast is especially critical. Not only does speedy search functionality make day-to-day work less tedious, it’s a business-process differentiator. It boosts productivity, enables better collaboration, and helps reduce costs. It‘s also central to a wide range of domains, such as governance, security, and compliance. 

More than that, with any type of document, excellent search has become a necessity. As businesses have started moving on from paper-based processes such as document scanning and embraced automation, modern search mechanics have become a must. That realization became all too clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many businesses had to rush all sorts of paper-based processes and systems online in order to simply stay afloat. 

So regardless of the document type, this new digital normal is here to stay. When you’re working from home, you certainly can’t access physical documents stuffed in manila file folders in the back of file cabinets. Plus, even if you’re in the office, it can be a time-consuming challenge to access on-premises digital file storage when indexing has been done sloppily or not at all.

Good things come to those who index

Document indexing makes sure that in the digital world, regardless of where you physically sit (or stand), you can lay your virtual hands on the info you need without too much effort. And in doing that, you and your company stand to benefit from these business-transforming perks:

  • Saving time. Indexed files are found faster, so you save the time you would have had to spend tediously searching through files in order to put your (index) finger on the right item.
  • Saving money. Using a streamlined document indexing system can reduce your storage spend and help you get better ROI on employee time.
  • Improved collaboration. Files that are easy to find are that much easier to share, too. And easy sharing lets employees do what they need to do work while expending less effort.
  • Better security and compliance. Indexing arranges files more logically, with everything in the right place, which lets compliance and security audits run smoothly when needed.

How document indexing works

Whether it’s your sunglasses or a necessary document, to find something quickly, you first need to know where to look. With glasses, you would begin by looking in the “obvious places.” Are they in the car? On the counter with your keys? In the fridge where you put them last time? Document indexing is the digital equivalent of this problem-solving process. 

One simple definition of an index is the place where data used by a search engine is stored. 

Think back to your high-school math textbook. There was probably an index in the back, where you could browse for topics, equations, names, along with the page numbers where these items were discussed.

A document index is kind of similar.

When a document is digitized, saved, or stored, it’s assigned tags, which can then later be located in searches. To index documents, you tag them to highlight key attributes. For work purposes, we’re talking about tags like the date, employee name, customer name, vendor name, customer reference number, project name, client, barcode, account name, account number.

So then, instead of having a search engine become overworked by having to comb through every word in every available document, which could get tedious with things like medical records, human resources files, or gargantuan collections of digital images, you’re pointed only to files and folders for which your tags match. 

Essentially, document indexing narrows a search, ensuring that the key terms are prioritized. So instead of the search engine digging endlessly through gigabytes of files and folders, you’re presented with perhaps two or three documents based on their relevance to the terms in your search.

Three document-indexing methods  

Did you know there are three slightly different types of indexing? Here are the details:

Full-text indexing

As the name indicates, a full-text-indexing process involves scanning every single word in a document, from the file name on down to the footnotes. A full-text index requires searching streams of unstructured data. Then, if your full-text search terms appear exactly, word for word, in a document, your search results will point you to that document. 

The problem with this comprehensive approach is twofold. First, if your company is a large enterprise, hundreds of thousands of documents may need to be dutifully searched. Second, unless your entered search terms are incredibly specific, you’ll be presented with search results that aren’t particularly relevant.

Metadata indexing

Fortunately not all searches need to be full text. Some documents are indexed by metadata: Metadata information about documents, as opposed to terms found in them.

Unlike full-text indexing, in metadata indexing, only the tags assigned to a document are noted. So then instead of searching every word of documents, folders, and systems, only the metadata is searched. This level of search is commonly used to shorten search times and improve workflow in the business world.

Field-data indexing

Like the metadata approach, field-based data indexing narrows searching to speed up efficiency. Instead of applying metadata tags to scanned documents, for instance, this type of search covers predefined fields, such as “order number,” “invoice number,” and “customer number.” Fields are more rigid than metadata tags, so any search will be even more acutely pinpointed.

Algolia can help

How you approach document indexing in the digital world (as well as indexing with paper documents, undoubtedly) can mean the difference between mediocre business results and fabulous success. Indexing may sound relatively inconsequential, but optimizing how users find digital documents and other data assets in your file-system storage space can significantly lead to better efficiency and employee productivity. In short, good document indexing directly impacts how smoothly and reliably your business operates. 

If you’re ready to start benefiting from building a world-class search experience for your employees and customers, check out Algolia’s enterprise search, which lets you index your documents for easy retrieval. To learn more about our document-indexing solutions and how to optimize with high-quality index data and search, get in touch today.

About the author
Catherine Dee

Search and Discovery writer

linkedin

Recommended Articles

Powered byAlgolia Algolia Recommend

What is a search index and how does it work?
product

Adam Smith

Sr. Director, Digital Marketing

An Exploration of Search and Indexing: Fast Indexing Scenarios
product

Peter Villani

Sr. Tech & Business Writer

12 ways to improve your search index
engineering

Jon Silvers

Director, Digital Marketing