About Queries

A query is a set of one or more expressions sent to an index to return matching relevant items. By entering a query that is relevant to the items you want to retrieve, Coveo delivers relevant search results through intelligent search features from various amounts of data. To understand the complexity of the search operations that can be executed, it’s important to understand what exactly counts as query in a Coveo implementation.

As a rule of thumb, whenever search results are updated, you can be fairly certain that a query was performed.
Technically, each call to the /rest/search/v2 (or /rest/search) Search API route counts as a query. However, queries don’t all count against the queries per month (QPM) quota. For example, persistent queries count against the persistent queries per month (PQPM) quota of a Coveo organization.

What Counts as a Query

Queries can take many forms, but some of the most common are:

Search - An end user types in the search box and hits Enter, or clicks Submit.
Applying filters - An end user filters the search results by selecting a tab, toggling facet values, etc.
Sort - An end user changes the sort criteria and/or direction of search results.
Paging - An end user resizes the current page, or navigates to a specific page of the search results.
Document suggestions on a case deflection interface - An end user is creating a case. As they fill the case, relevant item suggestions are updated to reflect the user’s needs. A new query is sent to the index every time the suggestions are updated.
The default delay of which item suggestions are updated varies depending on the Coveo integration you’re using:
- When using the Coveo for Salesforce CaseDeflection Component, you can adjust the query delay through the queryDelay option.
- When using the Coveo for ServiceNow Case Deflection Widget, you can adjust the query delay through the Minimum time between automatic queries option (see Case Deflection Widget Options).

What Doesn’t Count as a Query

Here are a few examples of actions that don’t count as queries:

Clicks - Clicking a search result item doesn’t count as query. However, if you’re using Coveo-powered listing pages, requesting the data to render such a listing triggers a search request, and therefore counts as a query.
Coveo ML Event Recommendations - These are available in the Enterprise Edition of Coveo products and count against their own quota (i.e., recommendations per month (RPM)).
Query suggestions - Getting facet value, field, or Coveo ML Query Suggestions (QS) doesn’t count as a query. However, selecting a rendered query suggestion triggers a search request, which then counts as a query.

search-as-you-type is different from QS, as it requests entirely new results on each keystroke. This means that when the search-as-you-type feature is enabled in a search box, each individual keystroke counts as a distinct query.

You can refer to the query entitlement metric to get more detailed information about what does and doesn’t count as a query.