Search section (admin)¶

The Search section in the admin gathers everything about how shoppers find things: whether search is healthy, rebuilding its index, what people search for, the synonyms that help them, and a place to test a search. It is open to merchandisers, admins and super admins.

Every page has the same section menu: a column beside the page on a desktop, a row of chips you can swipe along on a phone.

Overview¶

Health cards show:

• Search engine: Healthy, Unreachable, or Not set up. If search isn't set up the page says so and links to Search settings; if the engine isn't answering it shows the error. The rest of the page still works.
• Products indexed and Pages indexed: how many documents the engine holds. Pages show Off when content search is off.
• Last reindex: the most recent rebuild, its outcome and who asked.
• Searches today, when search tracking is on.

Rebuild the search index builds a fresh index from your catalogue and swaps it in with no downtime. Shoppers keep using the old index until the new one is ready, and if the rebuild fails the old one stays live. Pick:

• Rebuild everything: products and content.
• Products only.
• Content only: needs content search switched on.

You're asked to confirm, and the page then follows the rebuild (waiting, running, done or failed, with the document count). You can leave the page; come back and it picks the run up again. If someone has already started a rebuild in the last 30 minutes, your click joins it instead of starting a second.

You rarely need this. Changes to products and pages are indexed as you save, and a nightly job reconciles any drift. Rebuild after a large import, after changing facets on a merchandising tree, or when search looks out of date.

Top searches and Searches that found nothing cover the last 7 days, with links to the full reports, plus quick links to Synonyms, Test a search, Merchandising trees and Search settings.

Analytics¶

Choose the last 7, 30 or 90 days (90 is how long search terms are kept). You get the total searches and how many found nothing and, with click tracking on, how many searches led to a product being opened (Clicked), to a product being added to a basket (Added to basket) and to an order (Ordered, with the revenue those products brought in). Then:

• Searches that found nothing: each has Add synonym (opens the Synonyms page with the word filled in), Add to a product (opens Search terms with the word filled in) and Test (opens Test a search with it filled in).
• Searched often, rarely clicked: searches made at least 10 times that find products, but under 10% of which lead to a product being opened. The results probably aren't what shoppers meant. Each has Add synonym, Add rule (opens Rules and ranking with a rule for the word started) and Test.
• What searches lead to: for the most common searches, the share that led to a click, an add to basket and an order, and the revenue. Rarely clicked searches are flagged here too.
• Top searches: the most common searches and how many results the latest one found.

A click is the first product a shopper opens from a page of results. An add to basket counts when the product goes in the basket within 30 minutes of the search, and an order when the basket is ordered within a day. Rates are per search, so you can compare searches of any size. Clicks and sales only start counting once click tracking is on, so searches from before then look unclicked.

If search term tracking is off, the page explains and links to Search settings; if only Record Search Clicks and Sales is off, the page shows searches alone and says so. Only the search words and daily counts are kept, never who searched or from where. On a phone each table row becomes a card.

Synonyms¶

Add, edit and delete synonyms, accept or reject AI suggestions, ask AI to suggest more (Suggest with AI), and Resync the saved synonyms into search if some show a warning icon. Details of the two types and the AI review are in Search Synonyms. The page's list of searches that found nothing links straight to Test a search and offers Add synonym for each.

The old "Explain a search" box on this page now lives on its own page, Test a search.

Search terms¶

A product's search terms are extra words shoppers use for it that aren't in its name or description, like "coach bolt" for hex-head bolts or "decking screws" for a pack of wood screws. Search matches them like the name (stemmed, so "bolts" finds "coach bolt"), but shoppers never see them. Use a synonym instead when the word means a whole kind of thing you sell ("wellies" for every welly boot); use a search term when it should find one product.

The page has three parts:

• Add a search term to a product: type the term, then find the product by name or SKU and press Add. The term is added to the product's own (a duplicate is skipped).
• Products with search terms: every product that has some, by name, with its terms as chips and a filter by name, SKU or term. Edit turns a row's terms into a comma-separated box; save an empty box to remove them all. The product name opens the product editor.
• Searches that found nothing in the last 30 days: Add to a product fills the term in above, ready to pick the product.

The same field is on the product editor's Details tab, in the Shop search card, as a comma-separated list.

The rules are the same everywhere (the editor, this page and the MCP tools): terms are trimmed, duplicates are dropped ignoring case (the first spelling is kept), a term can't contain a comma and is at most 50 characters, and a product can have at most 50. A list that breaks a rule is refused with the reason; on the product editor the rest of the product still saves and the old terms stay. Saving reindexes the product like any other edit, so the change reaches search within seconds.

Rules and ranking¶

A rule applies when a shopper searches exactly its term (case and spacing ignored). It can pin, boost or bury products by SKU, send the search to a page on your site, and show a banner above the results. Add rule opens a form; each row has Edit and a delete button that says what will change before it deletes. A category's own order is set on the node in Merchandising trees. The full behaviour is in Search Rules: Pins, Redirects, Banners.

Test a search¶

Type what a shopper would. You see:

• how many products are found and the first ten, in the order the shop shows them;
• the words the search split it into, the live synonyms that applied and any suggested ones that would apply once accepted;
• when you also give a product's SKU, SEO name or id, why that product is or isn't found: whether it is in the catalogue, enabled and indexed, where it ranks, and which searchable fields contain which of your words;
• what to do next.

The search and product are in the address (?q=wellies&product=SKU-1), so you can send a result to a colleague.

Permissions and data¶

All Search pages and the /admin/search/rest endpoints require the MERCHANDISER, ADMIN or SUPERADMIN role and act on the site you're signed in to. Rebuild history is kept for 30 days. For how rebuilds work internally, see Search Architecture.

For developers¶

These are same-origin admin endpoints over the admin session, not part of the public REST API.