This page lists a set of interactive tutorials for Vertex AI Search for retail. These tutorials include actions that can be run in the Google Cloud Shell Editor. With this tool you can write, build, test, run, and debug cloud native applications directly from your browser.
Overview
Try different tutorials depending on what you'd like to learn:
If you're starting a project, try the Import catalog information tutorials. Here, you learn how to import products into the catalog so you can try out, for example, different search functionalities. Next, see the Import historical user events tutorials. Vertex AI Search for retail uses user events to generate initial recommendations and search results. Then try the Record real-time user events tutorials. Real-time user events provide high quality and relevant results.
If you're interested in how search works in general, try the Search tutorials.
If you want to learn how to configure search with serving configs and controls, try the following tutorials:
If you need to update your catalog information, see the Manage catalog information tutorials.
If you want to learn how to update inventory, see the Update inventory for search tutorials.
If you want to learn how to record, view, or remove real-time user events, see the Record real-time user events tutorials.
If you plan to use recommendations, see the tutorials for importing and managing catalogs and user events.
Import catalog information
These tutorials describe how to import your catalog information and keep it up to date.
Import catalog data from BigQuery
This tutorial shows you how to use a BigQuery table to import large amounts of catalog data with no limits.
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Import catalog data from Cloud Storage
This tutorial shows you how to import a large number of items to a catalog.
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Import catalog data inline
This tutorial shows how to import products into a catalog inline.
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Manage catalog information
These tutorials describe how to manage your product information after you have imported a catalog. You can read, write, and delete products in your catalog.
Learn how to call the API with your language of choice.
Create/Get/Update/Delete product tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to use API methods, which perform the following actions:
- Create a product
- Get a product
- Update a product
- Delete a product
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Create product tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to create a single product.
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Get product tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to retrieve a product item.
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Update product tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to update a product in a catalog.
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Delete product tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to delete a product from a catalog.
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Import historical user events
These tutorials describe how to import user event data from past events in bulk. Models require user event data for training.
Import events from Cloud Storage tutorial
This tutorial shows how to import user events from Cloud Storage.
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Import events from BigQuery tutorial
This tutorial shows how to import user events from BigQuery.
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Import events inline tutorial
This tutorial shows how to import user events data inline.
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Record real-time user events
These tutorials describe how to record, view or remove real-time user events. Vertex AI Search for retail uses real-time user events to generate recommendations and search results. Recording as many types of user events as possible with valid product information increases the quality of your results.
Write user events tutorial
This tutorial shows how to record user events using the
userEvents.write
method.
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Rejoin user events tutorial
This tutorial shows how to rejoin user events by making a POST request to the
userEvents:rejoin endpoint.
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Remove user events tutorial
This tutorial shows how to purge user events.
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Search Tutorials
The search() method is used to search over the catalog according to the search query and other parameters, such as filter, facet, or order_by.
By default, the search response contains a reasonable number of results ordered by relevance.
Querying tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to send a simple search query and analyze the response.
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Pagination tutorial
This tutorial shows how to control pagination in the search request. When a shopper looks for products in a shop, they can improve their navigation through search results. For example, they can limit the number of items in the search response by using the page size feature or jump to their preferred page by using the offset feature.
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Query expansion tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to enable the query expansion feature. When a shopper uses an ambiguous or a multi-word search phrase, they can get an empty response. After turning on query expansion, the request is analyzed and what's returned is the expanded list of products based on the parsed search query.
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Filtering tutorial
This tutorial demonstrates the filtering feature. It lets you fine-tune search requests according to your or your customer's needs. You can filter by single or multiple fields, filter by text or numeric fields, or both. You can use an expression language to construct a predicate for each field or combine different expressions using logical operators. For example, a shopper looking for shoes can use filters to narrow their search to their preferred brand and color.
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Ordering tutorial
This tutorial shows how to order items in a search response. When a shopper looks for a product on your site, you can show results ordered by multiple fields. For example, a shopper is searching for a dress with the best price and discount. Price and discount are multiple fields here. The shopper is shown dresses ordered by price, and for the dresses with the same price, ordered by discount.
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Boosting tutorial
This tutorial shows some examples of product boosting in search results. With boosting, you can apply a boost to a product to prioritize or deprioritize it in the search results.
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Redirect control tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to use the redirect control. The redirect control lets you specify a URL to which you can redirect users when they use a specific search query. For example, if a user requests "sustainable manufacturing products", you can redirect them to a page containing the environmental brands that you are working with.
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Update inventory for search
While the Product create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) methods are used to
broadly modify a Product's attributes, there is a set of Product methods
that can be used for updating inventory-specific fields with varying levels of
granularity. The following Product fields are considered inventory fields:
Product.price_infoProduct.availabilityProduct.available_quantityProduct.fulfillment_info
Add fulfillment tutorial
This tutorial shows how to update product fulfillment information using the
AddFulfillmentPlaces
method. In this way, search can show updates where products are available and orders can be fulfilled. For example, a shopper is looking for blue jeans in a shop but they're out of stock. The moment the jeans are in stock again at this shop or any other shop, the shopper sees the updates and can proceed with their order.
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Remove fulfillment tutorial
This tutorial shows how to update product fulfillment information using
the RemoveFulfillmentPlaces method. In this way, search can show updates where products aren't available and orders can't be fulfilled. For example, a shopper is looking for blue jeans in a shop. If the jeans become out of stock in this shop, the shopper sees this and can't proceed with their order.
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Set inventory tutorial
This tutorial shows how to push inventory updates using the
SetInventory
method instead of updating the entire product.
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