Plan requirement
| Subscription | Suite Team or higher, Knowledge Professional or higher |
| Access | Admin |
Semantic search matches meaning rather than words, which forgives vocabulary mismatch without removing the need for good titles.
What changes
Older search matched words. Somebody typing "cannot log in" found articles containing those words, and missed one titled "Password reset".
Semantic search understands that those are the same question, so the article is found anyway.
Whether you have it is not a setting you switch on. Zendesk has been rolling it out gradually, and which content it covers depends on the language and on where the search happens. So a help centre in two languages can behave differently in each, and the difference is not something you configured.
What it does not fix
- Articles that do not exist. It finds what you have written, not what you have not.
- Articles covering five subjects. A vague article matches vaguely.
- Your own jargon, where a term means something specific in your product that it does not mean generally.
Labels still earn their place for that last one, and for product names and error codes.
How it changes what you write
Less anxiety about exact keywords, more value in writing clearly. An article that explains one thing well is now easier to find than one stuffed with phrasings.
Which is the direction good writing was already going.
Rolling out
Availability differs by language and by plan, and it has been arriving gradually. Worth checking what applies to your help centre rather than assuming, particularly if you run more than one language.
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