Personalization implementation checklist

Use the implementation checklist to make sure your Personalization implementation is ready to go live.

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’ve made a comprehensive list of behaviors your users take that signal their affinities.
• You’ve classified behaviors as view, click, or conversion.
• You’ve classified behaviors as search-related or not.
• You’ve classified behaviors as item-based or category-based.
• You’ve selected consistent event names.

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

A personalization strategy determines how Algolia computes a user profile using the events you send. You can configure the personalization strategy in the Algolia dashboard or with the API clients. The dashboard is recommended because it includes a visual simulator that helps you preview and understand how your strategy affects search results.

You’ve defined a valid personalization strategy

• You’ve included and weighted events in your strategy.
• You’re sending the events that you chose in the strategy. You can see the events received during the last 90 days in the Personalization section of the dashboard.
• You’ve included and weighted facets in your strategy. To select facets for the strategy, you need to declare the attributes as facets.
• You’re sending events related to the facets you chose in the strategy.
• You’ve set a non-zero Personalization impact. You can set the Personalization impact at the app level in your Personalization dashboard, or with the personalizationImpact search parameter, at query time.

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.