Coveo Solutions Inc., a unicorn startup that helps companies such as Salesforce.com Inc. and Adobe Inc. improve their websites with artificial intelligence, today introduced new features to help developers more easily use its technology.

Coveo announced the features at its annual Relevance 360 Week virtual event.

Quebec City, Canada-based Coveo started out as a provider of cloud-based search technology. The startup’s search engine, which is still a key part of its feature set, can be embedded into a corporate website to help users quickly find specific pages. The software uses an array of AI algorithms to personalize results for each website visitor.

After a $172 million funding round in 2019 that valued Coveo at $1.1 billion, the startup established a presence in two segments adjacent to the embedded search engine market. The startup used its AI technology to build a recommendation engine that enables online retailers to suggest relevant products for online shoppers.

Coveo also offers features for personalizing website content. The startup provides its various AI-powered capabilities through a single managed service called the Coveo Relevance Cloud.

Today’s update introduces a command line tool for Coveo Relevance Cloud. The command line tool, the startup says, will allow software teams to automate some of the work involved in adding embedded search features to a website by writing scripts. Developers also gain access to features that will simplify the task of troubleshooting Coveo Relevance Cloud deployments and make it easier to manage the website content displayed in search results.

Another set of software tasks can be automated through the Coveo Push API, an existing developer tool included in the platform. Coveo is now adding three software development kits for the Python and Java programming languages, as well as Node.js, to make using the Coveo Push API easier. The tool simplifies tasks such as uploading content to the platform for use in search results and managing employee access to the content. 

Coveo says that the improved Coveo Relevant Cloud provides support for “headless” search implementations. Headless software is a term describing cloud services that provide a set of features without a pre-configured user interface for accessing them. The benefit is that companies can create their own, custom interfaces instead of being  limited to the one provided by the cloud service’s operator. 

According to Coveo, the Coveo Relevance Cloud is now “fully user interface framework agnostic” to let enterprises use the interface development tools of their choice to design website search pages. For projects that require less customization, the startup offers a built-in user interface library called Coveo Atomic. It contains software building blocks that can be assembled into an interface with relative ease.

Capping off the announcements from the Relevance 360 Week event is a new training portal. Dubbed Level Up, the portal provides access to learning resources that Coveo says allow developers to familiarize themselves with its platform’s features.

The updates come a few weeks after one of Coveo’s top competitors, Algolia Inc., raised $150 million at a $2.25 billion valuation. Similarly to Coveo, Algolia began with an initial focus on helping companies add search features to their websites and is now expanding to other areas. Earlier this year, the startup launched a product recommendation engine aimed at e-commerce. 

Image: Coveo