Case Study: Coursera achieves 10x faster search and improved learner discovery with Algolia

How Coursera Uses Algolia to Make Learning More Accessible to Anyone, Anywhere

Coursera, the online learning platform that partners with top universities to offer over 2,800 courses to more than 36 million learners, needed a more flexible discovery system to match users with the right content. Their legacy Solr-based search was inflexible, hard to iterate on, and unable to support modern features like federated search, slowing product development and limiting the learner experience.

Coursera adopted Algolia for a quick, customizable search foundation—achieving parity with their old system in two weeks and launching a refreshed search UX in under three months with limited engineering resources. The result: a 10x speed improvement (searches now under 10 ms), a 10% increase in degree description pageviews, about 30% of enrolled students coming from search, and the ability to rapidly add features like highlighting, tags, and future personalization.

Coursera

Chris Liu

Software Engineer, Growth