How does Acquia Search powered by SearchStax usage drive activity to Cloud Platform? For example, when a user enters a search query, does it result in a single request to the user’s Drupal application?

If you change only the Solr backend from Search to Acquia Search powered by SearchStax, the current impact on views, visits, and dynamic requests is maintained. To reduce views and visits, use a JavaScript UI kit that is provided with Acquia Search powered by SearchStax.

If you follow the instructions in Migrating to Acquia Search powered by SearchStax, the dynamic request count does not change. Site Factory users use Varnish. For users with a CDN, requests handled by Varnish or a CDN are not considered as dynamic requests. A CDN can serve the response if caching and the CDN are implemented in front of the infrastructure. Therefore, the system does not consume a search query and does not count a view.

For example, if you enable Auto-Suggest in Drupal, it triggers a search query to retrieve suggestions as you begin typing. The suggestions are temporarily cached on the Drupal server before they expire, prompting the server to reconnect to the Solr backend. Therefore, Drupal might send a request to the Solr server every time a user starts typing in the search box. If you configured Auto-Suggest to activate after two characters and you search for Relays, the following requests are sent:

• Suggest - re

• Suggest - rel

• Suggest - rela

• Suggest - relay

• Suggest - relays

• Search - relays

To find relays, you might have to send a query to the Solr backend six times. However, if you use Acquia Search powered by SearchStax UI kits, a different suggested endpoint is targeted for the first five requests, and then connect to the main search endpoint for the final request when you press the return key. This approach reduces the number of queries that are sent to the main search index.