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Content Extraction

The Site Search 360 crawler analyzes your site structure to select search result titles and images automatically. For example, the first h1 tag on your page is usually taken as the title, and if you have an og:image meta tag, that becomes your search result thumbnail.

To customize these defaults, go to Data Structuring > Content Extraction.

Search result titles​

You can use XPath to control which text the crawler uses as the search result title. Enter the expression that points to your desired title element.

Title XPath

Enter a URL from your site under Test extraction to confirm the title is extracted correctly. When everything looks good, re-index your site.

Search result images​

If the automatically selected thumbnail is not suitable — or if you see a striped background, which means no suitable image was detected — you have several options. The crawler ignores icons, footer logos, and images set via the CSS background property.

Option 1: Set Open Graph meta tags​

Add or update the og:image meta tag on your pages. Your CMS or SEO plugin likely supports this. These are the same images shown when sharing links on social media and in messaging apps.

Once the meta tags are in place, re-index your site for the crawler to pick them up.

Learn more about Open Graph tags

Option 2: Use an XPath​

Under Image Extraction > Image XPath, enter the XPath expression that points to your desired thumbnail image.

Image XPath

Option 3: Use a placeholder image​

If your pages do not have suitable images, you can show a placeholder — such as your logo — for all search results.

In the Search Designer, go to Layout > Result Thumbnails > Show placeholder image and enter the URL of the image you want to use.

Placeholder Image

To configure this directly in your ss360Config:

results: {
  placeholderImage: "https://placekitten.com/200/300"
}

Option 4: Remove empty image containers​

To hide empty image containers entirely, set placeholderImage to null under results in your ss360Config:

var ss360Config = {
  ...
  results: {
    placeholderImage: null
  }
}

Multiple images per search result​

To display two or more images for a single search result, use Alternative Image Extraction.

Under Content Extraction > Alternative images XPath, point the crawler to the alternative images on your pages.

Here is how results can look after configuring alternative image extraction:

Main image:

Single image per result

Alternative image:

Multiple images per search result

Search result content​

Like titles and images, you can use XPath to include or exclude specific content from your pages in search results.

Common sections to exclude are headers, footers, and navigation elements, which the crawler may pick up but which are not relevant to search.

Content extraction