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This feature isn’t available on every plan. Refer to your pricing plan to see if it’s included.

Gather user data

To implement effective personalization, start by collecting the right user data. When users perform specific actions, send Algolia events that describe those actions. Algolia uses these events to build individual user affinity profiles. Before you begin sending events, analyze your users’ behavior and plan which corresponding events you’ll send.

You’ve analyzed which user behaviors are meaningful for your business objectives

You’re sending valid events that capture all necessary information

  • All your events include a unique userToken for the user engaging in the behavior.
  • You are using view, click, and conversion events for the appropriate behavior.
  • All your events include a valid eventName.
  • All your events include the index name where you’ve declared the applicable facets as attributesForFaceting.
  • If you’re sending events related to a search, you’ve included the queryID.
  • If you’re sending item-based events, you’ve included the relevant objectID.
  • If you’re sending category or filter-based events, you’ve included the relevant filters.
  • Optional but recommended: you’ve included the timestamp for when the behavior occurred.
For more information, see the Insights API reference. You can use the Insights log debugger in your dashboard to monitor the received events and ensure that none of them are missing fields or returning errors.

Configure your personalization strategy

The Personalization strategy drives how Algolia computes user affinity profiles using the events you sent. You can configure the Personalization strategy directly from your Algolia dashboard or using the API clients. Algolia recommends using the dashboard since it provides a visual simulator to simulate and explain your strategy’s effects.

You’ve defined a valid personalization strategy

You’ve simulated your strategy for real users

You’ve used the simulator in the dashboard’s Personalization section to simulate your strategy for various users and queries. The personalized results are as you would expect.

Turn on personalization on searches

Personalized searches build on a user’s affinity profile to boost search results related to their preferences. It’s best to use the API clients or InstantSearch UI libraries to perform searches.

You’re including enablePersonalization and userToken in your search requests

  • You’ve set enablePersonalization to true either as a search parameter or in the index configuration.
  • You’re using consistent userTokens in events and searches. To have personalized results, you must use the same userToken for the events you send for a particular user and the searches that user makes.
If you haven’t sent events for a particular userToken in the last 90 days, Algolia doesn’t personalize that user’s results.

Next steps

Before enabling Personalization for all your users, it’s best to A/B test your implementation.