Site search has long lagged behind the digital experience — frustrating customers and costing businesses revenue. While personalization and AI have transformed other parts of the customer journey, search often relies on outdated, manual systems. Now, a new generation of AI-powered solutions is changing that, bringing real-time relevance, automation, and omnichannel integration. The shift is underway — and faster than many in retail and e-commerce might expect.

The Site Search Experience is Frustrating for Customers and Businesses 

Customers frequently struggle to find relevant products, services, or content on many websites. Legacy site search platforms rely on outdated methods that require significant manual effort from businesses. Spelling corrections, synonyms, and search rules must be manually adjusted, leading to high maintenance costs. Even features like prefill and autocorrection fail to work consistently, frustrating users and causing lost sales opportunities. 

The Rise of New Players in the Market 

A new wave of search solutions is emerging, often from the Martech space, including CDP providers, personalization engines, and AI-driven tools. These new entrants focus on automation and AI to eliminate the manual work required for traditional search platforms. Instead of relying on human input for spelling corrections and synonyms, they use machine learning models to optimize search performance in real-time. 

One of the biggest advantages of these new players is personalization. They can tailor search results based on clickstream data and web behavior, as well as CRM data such as offline purchases, ensuring that customers see the most relevant results. Additionally, these solutions integrate seamlessly into omnichannel personalization strategies, allowing businesses to deliver a unified and consistent experience across multiple touchpoints. This is based on search tools that are fully integrated with your customer data platform or your MA-tools. 

The Traditional Site Search Problem 

For years, traditional platforms have dominated site search by providing businesses with highly customizable search functions. However, the challenge is that these solutions require significant manual work. Businesses must constantly tweak spelling corrections, add new synonyms, and define complex search rules. This ongoing effort to gain relevant search results, demands substantial resources, which many organizations lack. 

Moreover, traditional search platforms lack integration capabilities with other Martech tools. They operate in silos, failing to leverage customer data for personalization or analytics. As a result, they provide a static and often frustrating experience for users who expect search results to be tailored to their needs. 

The Revolution in Site Search 

New players are entering the market with AI-driven capabilities that transform site search into an automated, personalized, and omnichannel experience: 

• AI-Powered Chat Search – Tools like Dynamic Yield and Insider allow customers to chat with an AI bot to find the right products, significantly improving search accuracy and engagement. 

• Personalized Search Results – Search engines now adapt based on customer preferences, purchase history, and real-time behavior, ensuring users see the most relevant results first. 

• Omnichannel Personalization – Search results can now reflect discounts, personalized recommendations, and cross-channel interactions, ensuring a seamless shopping experience. 

• Automated Search Optimization – AI-driven platforms automatically handle spelling corrections, synonyms, and other optimizations, eliminating the need for manual adjustments. 

The New Players Shaping the Future of Search 

Several new players are leading the charge in redefining site search: 

• Insider – Combines automation, personalization, omnichannel capabilities, and AI-driven chat search, as well as an sales assistant based on LLM. 

• Bloomreach – Focuses on automation, personalization, and omnichannel search experiences. 

• Dynamic Yield – Offers AI-powered chat search, particularly for industries like fashion and furniture. 

Why Now is the Time to Act 

The new generation of site search platforms offers significantly better capabilities than legacy solutions. More importantly, as the market is still in transition, many of these new players are prioritizing growth over profitability. This means businesses can adopt next-generation search platforms at a reasonable cost today, securing a competitive advantage before these solutions become mainstream and pricing becomes more aggressive. 

For businesses looking to enhance their digital experience, now is the golden opportunity to transition to AI-powered site search solutions that drive higher engagement, better conversions, and a more seamless user experience.