1. What the built-in search does
According to the Shopify Help Center, the online store search needs no setup. It includes predictive search as customers type and typo tolerance, matches singular and plural forms and uses semantic understanding: related words and concepts from title, description, product type, category and tags can expand the results.
There are also clear limits. Shopify says there is no setting that controls how broadly search matches, and you cannot change how results are ordered. You influence results only through your product data and the Search & Discovery app. Products that are completely out of stock are shown at the end of the results by default.
2. What the Search & Discovery app adds
With the Shopify Search & Discovery app you can create filters, boost particular products for chosen search terms, choose which result types appear and add product recommendations. Product boosts are not applied when a query contains search syntax.
Filters have limits worth knowing for large catalogues: collections with more than 5,000 products show no filters, filter values on search results are based on the first 1,000 results, a filter shows at most 100 values and a store can have up to 25 filters. Your theme also has to support filters.
- Check that every product you want to find is published in the Online Store channel and not set to Unlisted.
- Add the most important product options or metafields as filters.
- Boost the right products for your most frequent search terms.
3. Test the search with a fixed test set
Take ten typical queries. Include a word with a typo, a part of a longer product name, an SKU and a two-word query where one word is in the name and the other in an option such as colour. Note whether the expected product is among the first results, and repeat the test after every change to your product data.
Pay particular attention to ranking: if the right products appear but too far down, the built-in search gives you few ways to change that apart from boosts.
Example test set
“gardn hose” (typo) · “hose” (part of “garden hose”) · “GH-25-GR” (SKU) · “hose green” (name and colour).
4. When a separate search is worth a test
A separate search makes sense if you need more control than boosts: your own synonyms or filters from any attribute in your product feed. Shopify notes that a third-party search app replaces the built-in behaviour, so compare results with your test set before you switch.
Grumeria has no Shopify app. You connect it with a product feed and add the widget to your theme. The feed can come straight from your store's public product data via https://grumeria.com/api/shopify-feed?shop=your-shop.com, or from a feed app (CSV or XML). 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. You can check your feed for free first.