Add pages and widgets
In Sitecore Search, pages and widgets work together to create the experiences you want for your customers. A page is always associated with a specific URL or a URL pattern. A visit to a URL on your website, triggers the rendering of the page and widgets configured for that URL.
All implementations begin with a home page, a search results page, and a content page. You can configure widgets for your implementation and configure landing pages and detail pages to host widgets.
The search results page is basically a container with a search results widget. When creating a search results page, you also add a search results widget specially created for it. Unless otherwise specified, the widgets offer search experiences of the default Content entity.
The page variation framework allows you to schedule the display of different widgets. For more control on widget behavior, you use the widget variation framework to create widget variation rules. Your implementation can have multiple pages if there are numerous widgets or widget variation rules.
Configuring widgets for entities
All data requests must include at least one entity type for the results. Typically, the response to a request with a single entity, includes a list of results. When a request supplies multiple entities, the response includes a list of results for each entity.
In implementations with multiple entities, you can configure a variation rule for a specific entity or have it apply to all entities. On the widget variation page, you use the Output entity drop-down menu to assign an entity. The default value is All.
In implementations with only one entity, the Output entity drop-down menu is not available.
Optimizing search results and recommendations
To target the Strategies and Settings sections of a rule, you can configure Site and Visitor tabs in the Context section of the rule. If you do not configure context, the rule is applied to all searches unless overridden by another rule.
The following procedures describe how to use widget variation rules: