---
schema_version: "1"
id: d263e683f56e6be7187ebd2d8f715859b5c977969c70f317270d67375d1d724d
title: Federated Search in Lightning Experience
collection: admin
version: current
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/ai/264-0-0/search_results_federated_search.md
canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=ai.search_results_federated_search.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5
source_site: help.salesforce.com
content_type: documentation
content_hash: 2b6ae45d39dd673ad924a96149c32129bb44a5c6d2f144c26bae8161430ea039
description: Understand how users see and interact with external search results in Lightning Experience.
products:
  - Cross Cloud
release: "264"
---
# Federated Search in Lightning Experience

Understand how users see and interact with external search results in Lightning Experience.

- External results appear in instant results and Experience Cloud site search results.
- External sources are grouped in the External Results section on the left side, under Search Results.
    - The external sources are listed alphabetically. You can’t customize the order.
    - Frequently used external sources appear in Top Results under Search Results.
    - The external source name on the search results page is the name that was entered when the source was defined.
    - If you added the external data source to the navigation bar, the external source also appears in the Search Results. The source is also listed under Show More in Search Results.
- Users select the Title to go to the record detail page or **View** to go to the external document directly. Depending on the external source, the URL opens in the external source website or in a frame inside Salesforce.
- When fields are searchable, relevance ranking, and any advanced search features (like spell correction) are applied per the external data source. Verify with the external search provider how it searches for content and which special features it offers.
- Salesforce search features (lemmatization, spell correction, nicknames, and synonym group features) and relevance ranking aren’t applied to external search results.
- The ability to sort results depends on whether the external search provider supports sorting on certain fields.
    - Options to sort by Relevance and Display URL are always available. However, if the external search provider doesn’t support these options, selecting the option doesn’t sort results. If the provider supports sorting for other fields, those options appear in the sorting dropdown. Sorting isn’t available for all fields.