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The query specifies a category tag (e.g. en:cookies).
 
The query specifies a category tag (e.g. en:cookies).
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Pros:
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* Can be used to display product recommendations for a given product (using the most specific category of the product)
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* Can be used for a search box that is limited to categories (e.g. suggest as you type restricted to known categories)
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* Can be used for a per category search interface that display 1st level choices, 2nd level etc. (e.g. first click on "Vegetables", then "Bananas" etc.)
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* There could be ways to pre-compute per category results that could be used to speed up queries
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Cons:
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* Does not support freely typed search queries (e.g. with a product name or brand)
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===== Match on keywords =====
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Allow users to enter keywords that can be matched indifferently to product name, brand, categories etc. This is how the current search function on the OFF web site is implemented.
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Pros:
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* Can be used for a search box
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Cons:
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* Currently does not work well for products in multiple languages
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* Difficult to do pre-computations to optimize queries
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===== Match on product ======
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Given a product as input, return "similar" products.
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Pros:
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* Can be used for products recommendations
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* Similarity could be based on other things that the category (e.g. labels, ingredients, brands etc.)
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Cons:
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* It could be very expensive to retrieve similar products in real-time or to pre-compute all of them
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* Does not work for category search of freely typed search queries
    
==== Optional filters ====
 
==== Optional filters ====
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The search query can contain filters to restrict
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The search query can contain filters to restrict the result set. e.g. the country where the products are sold.
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Those filters may also include user preferences for apps who do not want to do the personalization locally.
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=== Server-side indexing ===
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Based on the type of queries we want to support, we may be able and may need to pre-compute and store new information in the database to better support the queries.
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==== Similarity ====
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==== Non personalized sort order ====
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It is unrealistic to return all possible results to the calling app for all queries. E.g. if the query is "cookies", we cannot return tens of thousands of results. So we will need to use some kind of reasonable sort order that returns the most useful results for the app, without limiting the options for personnalization of the results.
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Possible criteria to include in the sort order:
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===== Product quality =====
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If we expect that the app will only offer "better" products and not worst products, we may include things like the Nutri-Score or NOVA in the sort order.
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===== Popularity =====
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We could also include a measure of product popularity (e.g. derived from scans) in the sort order.
    
== Technical specs ==
 
== Technical specs ==

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