Engaging Endpoints: 4 Ways to Supplement GIF search
April 1, 2020 by
We’d like to highlight four public API endpoints designed to increase engagement and create better user experiences for products and projects integrating GIPHY. At GIPHY, we use these endpoints to help users discover content and as ancillary features for our core GIF search experience — as we know a blank search input on a platform with hundreds of millions of GIFs and Stickers can be a bit daunting to users. Perhaps they don’t know what they want to search, or would rather passively consume content rather than actively search for it. The endpoints are designed specifically with these use cases in mind, and offer fun and simple ways to pique curiosity and unlock novel user interactions.
GIF Categories
The GIF Categories endpoint returns the list of high-level content categories and their respective subcategories, which we use to classify our GIF content. These categories were assembled by our internal team of GIF experts, and each one includes a representative GIF ideal for display, providing the perfect foundation for building interfaces for browsing and exploring. Check out how we use this data on our categories page.
Trending Searches
The Trending Searches endpoint returns a set of search terms that are “trending” across the GIPHY network. These results are updated hourly, and are sourced from both humans and algorithms. Some terms surface due to statistical significance, like a recent volume surge in search queries for that term, while others are hand-picked by our Editorial team for their social or cultural relevance. Given GIPHY’s standing as a cultural barometer of sorts, this endpoint is a great way to get timely, meaningful content to your users. We use it to power our “popular searches” dropdown in our mobile app available on iOS and Android.
Search Suggestions
The Search Suggestions endpoint returns a set of related search queries for a given query. These results are generated by a neural network embedding trained on user activity able to group tags/queries by their semantic similarity. Given the nature of how people use GIPHY, we’re able to capture powerful relationships amongst terms stemming from pop culture, internet slang, sports, emotions and expressions. You can see this endpoint in action with the related search terms listed on a search results page.
Autocomplete
The Autocomplete endpoint returns a list of searches matching a given string of characters. While there are many ways to utilize this endpoint, one of the most useful means is for search query autocomplete. Query autocomplete is a key component of any modern search engine, and is proven to provide a better overall user experience by reducing typing, reducing spelling errors, and promoting higher-quality search results. We use this endpoint to power the search autocomplete results in our apps and website, and it’s a fantastic way for helping users find the perfect query that captures what they’re thinking or feeling.
Give them a try!
Whether updating a preexisting product, or starting from scratch, we think you’ll find these endpoints extremely useful for increasing engagement by helping people find and share great GIF content. Head over to our API Documentation to to read more about these and other endpoints available in the GIPHY public API.