Content Manager Features

Introduction

This page is for content managers — the people responsible for creating, organizing, and maintaining the content that gets searched across your organization's websites and systems.

What Can Content Managers Do?

As a content manager, you can:

  • Control which pages and content get included in or excluded from search results
  • Add thumbnail images to documents so they look better in search results
  • Set rules for how search crawlers read and process your pages
  • Manage FAQs using AI so common questions are answered instantly
  • Add custom labels (metadata) to pages to improve how they are found
  • Control how titles, descriptions, and dates appear in search results

Content Manager Features

Controlling What Gets Indexed

What is indexing?
When SearchBlox "indexes" a page, it reads and stores the content so it can be searched later. As a content manager, you can tell SearchBlox exactly what to include or skip.

FeatureWhat it does
Selective HTML indexingChoose which parts of a web page SearchBlox should read and index. For example, you can tell it to skip navigation bars, footers, or ads, and only index the main article body. This keeps search results clean and relevant.
Meta RobotsAdd a small tag to any web page to tell the SearchBlox crawler whether that page should be indexed or skipped entirely. Useful for keeping private, draft, or irrelevant pages out of search results.
Robots.txtA standard file placed on your website that lists rules for all web crawlers, including SearchBlox. Rules in this file take the highest priority — if a page is blocked here, SearchBlox will not index it regardless of other settings.
Canonical URLsIf the same content exists at multiple web addresses, a canonical tag tells SearchBlox which version is the "official" one to index. This prevents duplicate results from appearing. Example tag:
Sitemap SupportAdd a standard XML sitemap to your website so SearchBlox can discover and index all your pages automatically — including pages that might not be linked from anywhere else. Sitemaps referenced inside your robots.txt file are also supported.

Controlling How Content Appears in Search Results

FeatureWhat it does
Open Graph Meta TagAdd an og:image tag to any web page to display a thumbnail image alongside that page's search result. This makes results more visual and easier to identify at a glance — similar to how link previews look when sharing on social media.
Search Results DisplayControl how your content appears in search results by managing standard fields directly in your web pages: the page title, description, keywords, and last-modified date. After re-indexing, any updates you make will be reflected in search results automatically.
HTML Parser — Document DescriptionConfigure how SearchBlox reads and extracts a description for each page. It can pull the description from standard HTML tags such as META, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, or H6 — giving you control over what summary text appears under each search result.

Managing Dates & Freshness

FeatureWhat it does
Selective LastModified DateControl how SearchBlox determines when a page was last updated. You can use the default date from the server response, a custom lastmodified field on the page, or a custom date header — giving you flexibility to reflect the true publish or update date of your content.
Custom Date HeaderIf your web server uses a custom date format in its response headers, you can configure SearchBlox to read that date for indexing purposes. This is useful when your content management system sets its own date headers. Example: Header set SearchBlox-Last-modified "Wed, 01 Jan 2000 12:00:01 GMT"

Enriching Content with Metadata

What is metadata? Metadata is extra information attached to a page that is not always visible to readers but helps search systems categorize and surface content more accurately.

FeatureWhat it does
Custom Meta FieldsAdd custom metadata tags to your web pages — for example, a department name, content type, or product category — and configure SearchBlox to index them. Users can then filter search results by these fields, making it much easier to find specific content.

AI-Powered Content Features

FeatureWhat it does
SmartFAQsCreate and manage a library of frequently asked questions using SearchBlox's AI model. When users search for a topic covered by a SmartFAQ, the answer is displayed directly in the search results — saving users the time of reading through full documents.

Quick Reference: Common Content Manager Tasks

I Want To...Feature to Use
Stop a page from appearing in search resultsMeta Robots or robots.txt
Show a thumbnail image next to a search resultOpen Graph Meta Tag
Make sure only one version of a page appears in resultsCanonical URLs
Help SearchBlox find all my pages automaticallySitemap Support
Control what description shows under each resultHTML Parser — Document Description
Keep draft or private pages out of searchMeta Robots
Add department or category filters to searchCustom Meta Fields
Create answers for common questionsSmartFAQs
Update how a page's title or date appears in resultsSearch Results Display
Index only the main content of a page, not the sidebarSelective HTML Indexing