Case Study: City of Portland achieves faster, more accurate website search and happier Portlanders with Elastic Site Search

City of Portland Better Search Means Happier Portlanders

The City of Portland, Oregon — whose municipal website contains more than 200,000 pages and serves a population of roughly 600,000 — needed a better search solution after Google announced the end of its Site Search product and users complained about poor search functionality. Because the site hosts a wide range of bureau content and web apps (payments, licenses, utilities), finding accurate information quickly was a critical challenge for both residents and staff.

Portland implemented Elastic Site Search in about an hour, using its crawler, built‑in relevancy, and automatic reindexing to keep results up to date with minimal maintenance. The new search is noticeably faster, total searches have dropped by roughly half as users find answers in fewer queries, and overall public satisfaction with site search has improved.

City of Portland

Richard Davies

Web Application Developer