Playground
Search like a visitor, see which rules and synonyms fired, without spending plan bTokens or turning up in the analytics.
Search → Playground lets you search like a visitor, through the same engine, with the same synonyms and the same rules, but without spending plan bTokens and without entering the analytics.
Those two exclusions are what makes it usable: without them, nobody runs thirty searches in a row to tune a weight, because every trial would cost plan and would go on counting in the reports as if it were a customer.
What it shows on top
Besides the results, the things no visitor sees:
- Which rules fired on that search.
- Which active rules didn't fire, and why. It's the more useful half: a rule that seems not to work almost always has a condition that isn't met, and the screen says so instead of leaving you to guess.
- Which synonyms were applied to the typed term.
When a redirect rule fires, the destination appears but isn't followed. In a trial, what matters is knowing that it fires and where to, not leaving the panel.
Where it fits into the work
It's the instrument of the other pages in this manual, and it's worth using it always in this order:
- Before changing anything: search three or four representative terms and note what comes out.
- Change one thing only: a weight, a synonym, a rule.
- After changing: repeat the same terms.
Changing two things at once saves five minutes and takes away any chance of knowing which of them had the effect.
What it doesn't replace
The playground answers for the engine, and not for the search panel in the store. A result that appears here and doesn't appear in the store isn't an index problem: it's on the store's side (selectors, active filters, debug IPs). The list of those causes is in products that don't show up.