Index External Content

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

When you index Sitecore items for the first time, you typically add two Sitecore sources to your Coveo organization, one for the master database and the other for the web database. Testing a Coveo for Sitecore search interface in the Sitecore Experience Editor or using the Preview mode targets the master source, whereas a published search interface targets the web source.

Adding External Content in Your Coveo Organization

You might also want to index external content, that is, content that doesn’t come from your Sitecore instance. You can add external content to your Coveo organization by creating sources through the Coveo Administration Console (see Create an External Source).

Hence, after adding an external source to your Coveo organization, you will have Sitecore sources and a source of another type.

OrganizationSourceStructure

Structure of an example Coveo organization containing Sitecore sources for the master and web databases, and an external source of type Web.

Targeting External Sources in a Coveo for Sitecore Search Interface

You can easily configure a Coveo for Sitecore search page to search across your Sitecore content and entire external content simultaneously, if this is what you want to do. Otherwise, you can configure filter rules in Sitecore (with the Enterprise Cloud license) or through Query Pipelines to ensure that a query is only applied to one or a few specific sources in your Coveo organization. You can also set up source filtering on your search page tabs.

When you reach the Build Search stage of your Coveo for Sitecore implementation, you will want to refer to the articles below for instructions on how to configure your search interface to target external sources.