1. The search settings
According to the BigCommerce Help Center, search settings can be accessed in Settings › Search. Default Product Sort controls the order of product results; Relevance is the recommended option, alternatives include Featured Items, Newest Items, Bestselling, alphabetical, customer review and price.
Search Logic decides how multi-word queries match. By default a search for “Red Shirt” returns products with “Red” or “Shirt” in their searchable fields. If you select the other option, only products containing all words are shown. The first setting finds more, the second finds fewer but closer matches, so test both with your own queries.
2. Which product fields count first
BigCommerce lists the order in which store search prioritises product fields: SKU (exact match), product name (exact match), brand name, search keywords (exact match), product name (partial match), description, SKU (partial match) and search keywords (partial match).
Partial SKU searches need at least three characters and can match any portion of the SKU, including dashes, spaces, underscores and periods. Search keywords are extra terms you add per product under Storefront details. Text in Page Builder widgets is not searchable.
- Give products descriptive names instead of bare part numbers.
- Assign a brand to every product, because many shoppers search by brand.
- Add common misspellings and alternative terms as search keywords.
3. Use the In-Store Search reports
Under Analytics › In-Store search, BigCommerce shows three reports. Keywords Without Results lists searches that found nothing. Worst Performing Keywords lists searches that returned products nobody clicked. Search Term Corrections lists terms where shoppers clicked a “Did you mean” suggestion; for those suggestions, Enable Search Suggest must be switched on in Settings › Display.
The Help Center's fix in each case is the same: add the term as a search keyword to the products that should appear. That works well for a handful of terms, but every typo and synonym has to be added by hand, product by product.
Example
“derss” shows up in Search Term Corrections. You add “derss” as a search keyword to your dresses, and the next shopper with the same typo sees them directly.
4. BigCommerce search not finding a product? Check these causes
BigCommerce names three reasons a product does not appear in search: it is not visible, it is hidden through the inventory settings (for example at stock level 0), or it is not available to the shopper's customer group.
Conversational search, BigCommerce's AI search option, is only available for stores based in the European Union or the United States, on a paid plan, and only the store owner can switch it on. When enabled, catalogue text and shoppers' search queries are sent to Mixlayer Labs Inc. Stores based in the UK cannot use it, so for them the keyword search above is what shoppers get.
- Check that the product is set to visible on the storefront.
- Check the inventory settings and stock level of the product.
- Check whether the product is restricted to certain customer groups.
- Search for its exact SKU: if that works, the name or keywords are the problem.
5. When a separate search is worth a test
A separate search makes sense if you want typo tolerance, word parts and synonyms without maintaining search keywords per product, or filters right in the search window.
Grumeria connects to BigCommerce through a product feed (Google Shopping XML or CSV from a feed app) and a script added with Script Manager. The search runs on its own servers, finds products despite typos, searches every feed field you mark as searchable and uses your own synonyms. It works without cookies, with data hosted in Frankfurt. The free feed check reads a preview from your store's product pages, so you can see results before you set up a feed.