Algolia: born to be mobile

Back in 2012 when Algolia was first founded, the goal was simple: bring great search to everyone. In its early days, Algolia was a mobile search SDK. Our solution was lightning fast, lightweight & very powerful. We quickly realized that such a search engine could be hosted on a server and accessed through an API — lightning-fast, easy-to-use & powerful — and since then Algolia has truly been bringing lightning-fast search to everyone.

We’ve kept true to our roots over the years, providing robust iOS, Android & Windows Phone SDKs that today power search on some of the hottest mobile apps around — Periscope, Twitch, 8Tracks, Medium, ProductHunt & more. For Algolia, robust search means enabling app developers to build great search UX more easily, providing the same great experience building search on mobile as on web. It also means building features into our engine that are especially relevant on mobile, like geosearch & typo-tolerance. We also built Algolia Offline, an iOS & Android feature that allows app developers to sync search offline to retain search functionality in low- and zero-connectivity scenarios like roaming, taking the metro, driving cross-country, walking through a shopping mall or attending a conference.

We recently attended Mobile World Congress & 4 Years From Now (a sister event) to meet with mobile product teams and share what Algolia could do for them. We gave a workshop on mobile search patterns where we dove deep into what the most popular apps are doing with search on mobile, as well as our best practices for building search into mobile apps. We looked everything from search placement to inverted highlighting (check out our slides to learn more), and got to meet 100+ people building awesome things on mobile.

Filling potholes and paving roads

At Algolia, we strive to make it easy for product teams to create the search experience their users expect from their favorite digital tools, and, in an increasingly mobile world, that means offering an unparalleled developer experience on mobile. In order to do that, we have to fill potholes and build roads: that is, we try to take things that are hard to do today and make them easier tomorrow, and at the same time we try to push the limit of what’s possible in search by bringing new opportunities in terms of search UX.

In Barcelona, two words stuck out in every conversation: offline search. Passersby stopped in their tracks, pointed, muttered, grabbed some of our swag and eventually came up and asked us how we do it. We’ve already talked a lot about how we built Algolia in our Inside the Engine series, but what we’re most excited about with Algolia Offline is the infinite possibilities that mobile app developers have by unlocking the first piece of the puzzle: searching while disconnected.

We’re excited to see what mobile app developers will keep building — we spoke with two guys about how fridge repairmen in the middle of the Romanian forest need to know every part for every type of fridge (5Gb of data), so we’re sure there are rocks to be unturned in the future.

Attending Mobile World Congress and meeting first-hand with mobile developers of all stripes was invigorating. We’re looking to keep the conversation going with mobile developers: what are your needs/observations when it comes to search in mobile apps? Join our Discourse forum or a leave a comment below to get in touch!