This article will provide an overview of Shopify Predictive Search that is simple to understand and follow in a straightforward and practical way. You may know how to enable it or install it from a third-party application. However, there are a variety of helpful features and tweaks that can make a big difference in the end result. Simply enabling Predictive Search enhances the customer experience and increases customer engagement and conversion, but the full potential of the feature can be realized by optimizing the performance of Predictive Search in the background.

Table of Contents

• What Is Shopify Predictive Search?
• How Predictive Search Works
• Search Engine Configurations
• Customizing Predictive Search Results
• Improving Search Accuracy
• Using JSON for Advanced Results
• Search Data for Enhanced Performance
• Managing Predictive Search API Limitations
• Enhancing the Overall User Experience
• Key Takeaways

What Is Shopify Predictive Search?

Predictive Search is a function in Shopify that delivers relevant suggestions as customers enter their phrases into the search bar. The suggestions include products, collections, pages, and blog posts. With Predictive Search, customers do not have to scroll through numerous pages to find the items they are looking for. Predictive search guides customers to find items faster and easier, resulting in an increased chance to discover new products and convert into a purchase.

Predictive Search will pull from a number of data variables to deliver results based on:

• Past Search Queries
• Customer Behavior
• Customer Interactions

By analysing these variables, Predictive Search can make educated guesses about customer intent and rank results based on:

• Keyword matching
• User Intent
• Content Relevance and Quality

Predictive search allows merchants to understand what customers want based on search behavior, reduce cart abandonment, and improve product discovery. By analyzing predictive search data, merchants can optimize products, pricing, and marketing strategies.

Improving search results creates a better customer experience and directly increases sales.

Search Engine Configurations

The search engine configuration controls which properties are searchable when using predictive search. By default, the following properties are included:

Configuring these properties ensures customers receive the most relevant results when searching.

Customize the Way the Predictive Search Results Are Displayed

You can customize how predictive search results appear on the storefront by editing the predictive-search.liquid file. This includes:

• Layout & Styling
• Order & Ranking of Results
• Result Types (Products, Collections, Pages, etc.)

You can also control how many results are displayed using these parameters:

• predictive_search.resources.products
• predictive_search.resources.collections
• predictive_search.resources.queries