Amazon CloudSearch – The First Year

We launched Amazon CloudSearch just about a year ago today. In the year since we’ve launched, we’ve seen great customer adoption across a number of market segments for a wide variety of use cases.

CloudSearch in Action
Here are just a few of the ways that you can use CloudSearch online:

Search for a recent article on Reddit:

Find that missed episode of Downton Abbey on the PBS mobile video portal:

Check out your Twitter traffic on ManageFlitter:

Get great instructions for gardening on Snapguide:

Get some yummy recipes on ZipList:

Why Search?
This adoption points to the increasingly important role that search is playing in today’s local, social, and mobile applications. Search enables users to sift through the piles of big data to discover the answers they are looking for. Delivering a great search experience is critical to keeping users engaged, and ultimately increases revenue.

The feedback we hear from CloudSearch customers has been remarkably consistent: CloudSearch is easier to set up and use, saves them money, and provides excellent performance while freeing up their technical resources to focus on building the unique, value-added part of their application.

A Year of Features
We have added a number of powerful features to CloudSearch in the year since release. Here are some of the most important ones:

Rank Comparison – The CloudSearch rank comparison feature provides a new way to visually compare changes to rank expressions. Developers can quickly see how different rank expressions and field weights impact the sorting of search results in side-by-side windows. Field weights can be adjusted by using slider bars. Fast A/B testing and rapid iteration of rank expressions are enabled, without rebuilding the index. To learn more about comparing rank expressions watch this video:

Analytics – CloudSearch added analytics reports to provide insight into search effectiveness and user behavior. Metrics data can be tracked for each search domain including the total number of searches, searches for which no matching documents were found, the most frequent searches, and the top documents that were most frequently returned in search results.

Global Expansion – CloudSearch expanded beyond US East (Northern Virginia) to include availability in US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), Asia Pacific (Singapore) and EU (Ireland) Regions.  

Start Searching Now!
If you would like to check out CloudSearch, then you can get started for up to 30 days at no charge. For more details and information about the trial program and how to participate, see Amazon CloudSearch Free Trial. For pricing details and to learn more about Amazon CloudSearch, see the Amazon CloudSearch Overview.

CloudSearch Webinar
We’ll be holding a webinar to introduce you to CloudSearch on April 17th at 9:00 AM PDT. Register now if you would like to attend.

— Jeff;