Once an application is configured to provide search suggestions, those same suggestions can * easily be made available to the system-wide Quick Search Box, providing faster access to its - * content from on central prominent place. See + * content from one central prominent place. See * Exposing Search Suggestions to Quick Search * Box for more details. * @@ -505,7 +505,7 @@ import java.util.List; * *
Once your application is setup to provide search suggestions, making them available to the + *
Once your application is set up to provide search suggestions, making them available to the * globally accessable Quick Search Box is as easy as setting android:includeInGlobalSearch to * "true" in your searchable metadata file. Beyond that, here are some more details of how * suggestions interact with Quick Search Box, and optional ways that you may customize suggestions * for your application. + * + *
Important Note: By default, your application will not be enabled as a suggestion + * provider (or "searchable item") in Quick Search Box. Once your app is installed, the user must + * enable it as a "searchable item" in the Search settings in order to receive your app's + * suggestions in Quick Search Box. You should consider how to message this to users of your app - + * perhaps with a note to the user the first time they launch the app about how to enable search + * suggestions. This gives your app a chance to be queried for suggestions as the user types into + * Quick Search Box, though exactly how or if your suggestions will be surfaced is decided by Quick + * Search Box. * *
Source Ranking: Once your application's search results are made available to Quick - * Search Box, how they surface to the user for a particular query will depend on how many - * other apps have results for that query, and how often the user has clicked on your results - * compared to the other apps'. The apps with the best track record within Quick Search - * Box will get queried earlier and have a better chance of showing their results in the top few - * slots. If there are more results than can be displayed to the user within a screen or two, the - * results may spill into a "more results" section that groups the remaining results by - * source. The newest apps with little usage information are given middle of the road positioning - * until enough usage information is available to rank it as usual. The exact formula for ranking - * the results is not set in stone, but suffice it is to say that providing quality results will - * increase the likelihood that your app's suggestions are provided in a prominent position, and - * apps that provide lower quality suggestions will be more likely to be pushed into the spillover - * area. + * Search Box, how they surface to the user for a particular query will be determined as appropriate + * by Quick Search Box ranking. This may depend on how many other apps have results for that query, + * and how often the user has clicked on your results compared to the other apps - but there is no + * guarantee about how ranking will occur, or whether your app's suggestions will show at all for + * a given query. In general, you can expect that providing quality results will increase the + * likelihood that your app's suggestions are provided in a prominent position, and apps that + * provide lower quality suggestions will be more likely to be ranked lower and/or not displayed. * *
Search Settings: Each app that is available to Quick Search Box has an entry in the * system settings where the user can enable or disable the inclusion of its results. Below the * name of the application, each application may provide a brief description of what kind of * information will be made available via a search settings description string pointed to by the - * android:searchSettingsDescription attribute in the searchable metadata. + * android:searchSettingsDescription attribute in the searchable metadata. Note that the + * user will need to visit this settings menu to enable search suggestions for your app before your + * app will have a chance to provide search suggestions to Quick Search Box - see the section + * called "Important Note" above. * - *
Shortcuts: Suggestions that are clicked on by the user are automatically made into - * shortcuts, or, copied so they can quickly be displayed to the user before querying any of - * the sources. Thereafter, the shortcutted suggestion will be displayed for the query that yielded - * the suggestion and for any prefixes of that query. When multiple shortcuts are made available - * for a given query, they are ranked based on recency and the number of clicks they have received. - * You can control how your suggestions are made into shortcuts, and whether they are refreshed, - * using the {@link #SUGGEST_COLUMN_SHORTCUT_ID} column: + *
Shortcuts: Suggestions that are clicked on by the user may be automatically made into + * shortcuts, which are suggestions that have been copied from your provider in order to be quickly + * displayed without the need to re-query the original sources. Shortcutted suggestions may be + * displayed for the query that yielded the suggestion and for any prefixes of that query. You can + * request how to have your app's suggestions made into shortcuts, and whether they should be + * refreshed, using the {@link #SUGGEST_COLUMN_SHORTCUT_ID} column: *