Product Documentation
Product Documentation
When a user types in the search box, the system will try to give them suggestions based on the code and name of products in the system. The suggest drop down does not use search rules, but rather simply tries to match anything in the code or name of products to give the user product suggestions. If the user chooses one of these options, a search will be done for the product code chosen.
Searching is when the user actually searches for something in the search box on the site. When the user hits enter, the system will apply any matching search rules. Debugging information can also be shown on the screen with proper configuration. The following types of rules can be used to handle search.
Product search rules include the default product search rule for all searches along with specific search rules for terms that match a pattern.
The search will use these to modify the search terms entered by the user.
The search will use these to replace search terms entered by the user before searching products.
When a user searches for certain terms, these rules tell the system to redirect to a category page instead of doing the actual search.
Category rules can be set up to adjust how products are shown on category screens. These rules only apply when users browse through categories. They are not used when people search in the search box or filter after searching.
Administer how products are shown on categories by creating a category search rule and associating categories with that rule. These are mostly used for custom sorting and boosting, but other rules can also be applied.
When tuning search results, relevancy should be top priority. It is not recommended to do a lot of product boosting or re-ranking on search as it is important the user finds what they are looking for as near as possible to the top of the results. Users may become frustrated if they do a search for a product code or specific product name and do not find it immediately. For this reason, the default search is based on relevancy score.
If you are looking to change product order on actual searches, it is best to do search result overrides based on search pattern or use category redirects for more general terms where the user isn’t looking for anything specific.
When a user browses to a category on the site, the productOrder field on the products is used as the default search order. Categories are a good place to show customers the products you want in the order you want since they are simply browsing. For general search terms, it is also possible to redirect them to categories to take advantage of this. Categories can be custom ranked, sorted, and boosted using Category Search Rules.