Enabling Personalization

Learn how to enable Personalization with or without an InstantSearch implementation.

To give your users a personalized experience, you need to include the enablePersonalization and userToken parameters in the . How you do this depends on your Algolia implementation and whether you use InstantSearch.

You can also set enablePersonalization in your settings instead of sending it as a search parameter. This way, every search on your index uses Personalization. You can override this at query time by setting the enablePersonalization parameter to false.

If you set enablePersonalization as an index setting, you still need to include a user’s userToken in your search requests. If you don’t include the userToken, Algolia doesn’t know which user’s profile to apply to personalize the results.

Enable Personalization with InstantSearch

If you use InstantSearch, enable Personalization with the configure widget. The configure widget lets you provide raw search parameters to the Algolia API without rendering anything.

Using the configure widget, you can set the enablePersonalization to true and include the userToken. The userToken should match the one you’re using to send click and conversion events for a particular user.

JavaScript

instantsearch.widgets.configure({
  enablePersonalization: true,
  userToken: "user-1234",
});

For more information, see User token.

Enable Personalization using API clients

If you’re using one of the API clients to make search requests, you can include enablePersonalization and userToken as parameters. Add them to the search method. The userToken should match the one you’re using to send events for a particular user.

C#

var response = await client.SearchSingleIndexAsync<Hit>(
  "INDEX_NAME",
  new SearchParams(
    new SearchParamsObject { EnablePersonalization = true, UserToken = "user-1" }
  )
);

Enable Personalization using the dashboard

You can set enablePersonalization as an index setting for the indices you want to personalize results for. This setting automatically sets enablePersonalization:true for any search requests made on this index. If you want to turn off Personalization at query time, include enablePersonalization:false on those search requests.

Go to Indices section of the dashboard and then Configuration » Relevance Essentials » Personalization for each index you want to enable Personalization on. Here, you can set enablePersonalization to true.

Remember that unless you include a valid userToken, the engine can’t personalize results. Even if you enable Personalization on the dashboard, you still need to provide the userToken using either InstantSearch or an API Client.

That’s why you don’t automatically see personalized results when testing queries in the Browse section. This happens on an index where you’ve enabled enablePersonalization as an index setting. Instead of adding the userToken by selecting +Add Query Parameter, use the Personalization simulator. The simulator lets you compare personalized and non-personalized results, and explains how Personalization affected them.