How does the "This helped" button work in contextual search?

[Gabriel Ramos]

A while ago I set up contextual search for certain catalog items, where knowledge base articles appear as you type in the short description of the catalog item. When you open the contextual search results, a button labeled "This helped" appears. I need to know:

Does this button improve future search results?
If so, how does it work?

Thank you so much.

[SatyakiBose]

Hell @Gabriel Ramos 

This product documentation should answer your questions:

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/utah-platform-administration/page/administer/contextual-search/re...

When a user clicks any of the action buttons such as This helped, Order, or Attached, the feedback information is stored in specific tables. The information helps you to understand the effectiveness of the searches.

So yes. The button helps in refining the search results.

Hope I was able to anwer to answer your question.

[Gabriel Ramos]

Thanks @SatyakiBose , your response has been very helpful. But I would like to know if just clicking on the "This helped" button will see improvements in future searches or do I have to configure the contextual search to improve the results.

[SatyakiBose · Accepted solution]

Hi Gabriel,

To check if ServiceNow has any planned development to enhance the features of 'This helped' and contextual searches, I would recommend you to create a support case and get confirmation on that.

As far as configuring the contextual search, you don't need to configure it over and over again, unless you want to include or exclude specific tables as per business requirement.

The platform is robust enough to render the correct result.

If at any point in time, you feel that contextual search is not providing you the desired result, I would recommend you to check if the table has been indexed property or not.

If tables are not indexed, the search would not show correct results.

Hope this helps.