Making Search Work Under Constraint
- Vandana Munjal
- Mar 20, 2024
- 1 min read
Updated: Jul 2
Our total rewards & benefits portal held plenty of content, but no way to search it. Also, one of the most asked request from users. The obvious fix sounded expensive: “new platform, new budget, come back next quarter.” But, employees were stuck every day.
So I stopped sketching new buildings and looked for a smaller door.
Two Ways In
Hand-roll a JavaScript search: quick to code, weak on ranking.
Borrow a mature engine: let an external crawler do the heavy lifting.
The second path proved lighter. API's like Google Programmable Search & Bing Custom Search were cost-free, quick to wire in, and used our existing content, but only if it earned its place.
Trial by Sandbox

Safe space first: I collaborated with IT to build a sandbox so we could break things safely.
Real-query checks: searches like “tuition assistance” and “401(k)” surfaced the right page on the first try.
Usability metric: average findabiliy time dropped significantly
The bar cleared: low effort, zero spend, immediate lift.
We shipped the search bar that week.
Why It Worked Here
Public-facing pages were already indexed, so results appeared the moment search went live, no auth, no crawl lag.
If Your Content Sits Behind a Lock
Tools like Algolia, Elasticsearch, or Azure Cognitive Search can index private data securely behind SSO or API keys and still spare you a rebuild.
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