Clerk.io’s Search 3.0 comes with a set of customizable features that let you to adjust your site’s search behaviour even more. Once it is active in your store, you will be able to find the Search configuration page in the lateral menu under Settings.
In the Search configuration page, you will be able to adjust the different parameters listed below.
Note: every time you update your Search configuration, it will trigger an analyzation of your data. Depending on the size of your catalogue it may take up to 15 minutes, although in most cases it shouldn’t require more than a few minutes. Changes will be visible in your site once the re-indexation is over.
Filterable attributes: #
An important part of a good user experience when shopping online is being able to narrow down your search results by using filters (faceted search). But often times a web-shop’s catalogue includes a wide variety of attributes, and not all of them are meant to be used as facets.
The “filterable attributes” list should include all those attributes that you want to be able to include in your facets.
Note that adding filters to this list won’t immediatelly include them among you facets, but will make them available when creating your Search content.
Let’s look at an example:
Imagine you are importing the following attributes: id, name, sku, price, brand, colors, color codes, margin, stock, reviews amount and reviews average.
You would like to offer your visitors the option to narrow down their searches by filtering by category, color, price, brand and/or stock.
In order to be able to include these attributes in your facets, you should make sure they are part of the Filterable attributes list:
When manipulating the filterable attributes list, you will realize that the default attributes cannot be removed from it to ensure basic functionality.
The filterable attributes list is also the source of available attributes to filter your Clerk.io’s Search content (in case you want to narrow down the list of products that users can find via your onsite search).
Non-searchable attributes #
As its name suggests, this section allows you to exclude attributes from being considered in your site’s Search.
This could be interesting for you if you’re importing attributes you use internally, but don’t want your search results to be affected by them.
By default, price and stock are included in the list to avoid searches including numbers (that may have to do with SKUs or product names) to be skewed by those attributes. But you can fully adjust this list to your own needs.
Custom dictionary #
Search 3.0 comes with a custom dictionary. It allows Search users to add “user-defined” search terms that would normally be considered by the engine as sets of words, instead of single search terms.
For example, if your catalogue includes products from the sneakers brand D.A.T.E., you may want to include “D.A.T.E.” and “D. A. T. E.” in the custom dictionary.
Product unique identifiers #
Clerk.io will always try to return all relevant results for the searches on your site. However, in some cases, visitors might expect a different behavior. For example, searches for SKUs or IDs should return only exact matches.
By including those attributes in the “Product unique identifiers” list, you ensure that if Clerk.io finds a single exact match for any of them, only that specific product will be returned. In those cases, typo correction will not apply.
How does it work?
Clerk.io will determine if a search query should be considered a “unique identifier” based on the following criteria:
- It is alphanumeric and includes at least one of the following characters: “-+/&_.0123456789”.
- It has at least 5 characters
- It does not contain spaces or quotes
When a search meets these requirements, Clerk.io will check the attributes in the “Product unique identifiers” list:
- If it finds a single product exact match, Clerk.io will return only that product (overruling any customized search rule or merchandising campaign). Otherwise, it will be treated as a “normal” search and will return all matching products.
