SiteSearch is the site’s faceted search. It’s a custom module built by development that replaced the former Reliquary search plugin during the Craft 5 upgrade. It powers the search/filter listings (such as the index pages) and the “Featured Entries (SiteSearch)” module.
No. SiteSearch is configured by development. Its search groups — the pre-defined buckets of content that can be searched and filtered — are defined in code (modules/SiteSearch/config.php) rather than in the control panel.
A search group is a named, pre-configured search target — for example a particular section plus the filters (categories) that apply to it. Each group has a stable handle (a short text name like homeRecipes or blogindex). Groups are referenced by that handle.
Changed from Reliquary: the old plugin exposed numeric group IDs that editors looked up at
/cube/reliquary/groups. SiteSearch uses named handles defined in code instead, so there is no/cube/reliquary/...screen anymore. If you need a group handle for the “Featured Entries (SiteSearch)” module, the available handles for this site are listed on the “Site Specific” page (or ask development).
A search is only as safe as the content it exposes. Groups are scoped to specific sections on purpose so that searches return the intended content and don’t surface things like user accounts or private documents. Group definitions are managed by development for this reason.
Each group renders its results through a template (for HTML listings) or returns structured data (for typeahead-style lookups such as the district finder). These are set up by development as part of the group definition.