Coveo / Sitecore

Integrating External Website into Coveo Index for Seamless Search in Sitecore

I recently faced a scenario where I needed to integrate an external website into the Coveo Index and utilize it along with Sitecore Items on the website.

Let’s take my blog as an external data source and integrate it into the Coveo Index.

Trial Account

Feel free to create a new trial account and explore yourself – No credit card is needed it’s free and valid for 14 days.

https://www.coveo.com/en/free-trial

Note: Please make sure to use your business email.

Sources

After signing up, navigate to the Sources section.

There are many sources available like Sitecore, Web, Sitemap, Sitemap, and many more.

Web Source

Let’s focus on Web sources since we want to add my blog.

There are two Web sources available on-prem crawler and cloud-based crawler. Let’s choose the cloud-based crawler that is with the cloud icon on the right.

When I start filling in my blog URL, it automatically detects the Sitemap for the website – Switching to the Sitemap URL for better Indexing performance.

After switching, it automatically updated to a Sitemap source with the appropriate sitemap URL.

Content Security

The next step in the setup is Content Security.

We can permit for

Same users and groups as in your content system (Grayed out due to trial account)
Everyone – Anonymous can access
Specific users and groups

By default, the everyone option is selected this would be best for public-facing content.

Let’s change it to Specific users and groups for the demo.

Add Source

Once added after a few minutes the source will be available. You can review other settings if further tuning is needed.

Rebuild Source

Hit save and rebuild source that will initiate the rebuilding of the index.

Download logs provide more in-depth information – It’s super helpful when you face any issues.

Content Browser

Once the rebuild is completed, Open the Content Browser from the left navigation under content to see the items in the index.

It took only a couple of minutes to rebuild the entire blog this depends on the content of the site.

Yay! My entire blog is reindexed and ready to be consumed.

Now, in the Sitecore Coveo Search interface, I could include this as an external source and use the items in the index. We could also set up a blog template and display the results with images. The source type can also be used as a facet.

Hope this helps.

Happy Searching!

March 24, 2025

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Coveo / Sitecore

Coveo for Sitecore: Troubleshooting and Diagnostics

Coveo’s Diagnostics page is super helpful when troubleshooting any Coveo issues. It is listed in the Coveo Search menu in the Sitecore control panel or can be reached directly with the following url –

https://[CMS Site]/sitecore modules/web/coveo/admin/coveodiagnosticpage.aspx

Coveo for Sitecore components state

This section shows the status of all services related to Coveo. Here is the healthy state, but when it errors it shows the detailed error message

Healthy Component State

Errors in Component State

Coveo for Sitecore version information

It comes in handy for checking Coveo and Sitecore versions and their compatibility.

Current Coveo for Sitecore version: 5.0.1153.1

Current Sitecore version: 10.2.0.6766

Compatibility status: these versions are compatible

Coveo for Sitecore organization information

This section is about the Organization and it is usage details.

Coveo for Sitecore configuration files

Basically shows all Coveo-related config files that are currently loaded in the system.

Coveo for Sitecore published items

It shows if the Coveo-related Sitecore items are published or not, it’s time to publish them 🙂

Coveo for Sitecore Indexing test

This section comes into handy when indexing an item or a path, really helpful when an Item has been published but it’s not available in the Coveo index.

Coveo for Sitecore log viewer

This section is my favorite – I typically use it on Production environments to view the logs when we don’t have access to the server or without logging into the Production servers. We can quickly view the log and troubleshoot the issues.