Where search looks
The weight of each field, what changes when you save them, and how the results come out ordered.
With the store connected and indexed, search works with sensible defaults. This is the first screen to open when the results come out in an order that isn't the one you wanted: Search → Stores → edit, section Where search looks.
The weights
Every product field has a weight from 0 to 10, and 0 takes the field out of the search. The starting values:
| Field | Weight |
|---|---|
| Reference, EAN, MPN | 10 |
| Name | 9 |
| Brand | 7 |
| Categories | 6 |
| Features and attributes | 5 |
| Short description | 4 |
| Full description | 3 |
| Product ID | 0 |
What the weight sets is the order in which the fields count, not how much each one scores: a match in a heavier field beats an equal match in a lighter one, and fields with the same number keep the order of this list.
Two things an example explains better than the table does:
- Putting the full description above the name makes a product that mentions "cotton" twenty times in its description beat the one actually called "Cotton T-shirt". That's almost never what you want.
- Putting the ID above zero makes a customer who types "2024" find product number 2024. That's almost never what you want either, and it's why it starts at zero.
Warning Saving a different order makes the engine rebuild the index. Search keeps answering in the meantime, in the previous order, and the results settle into the new one within moments; on a large catalogue, within a few minutes. Putting every field at zero is refused.
How the results come out ordered
By default, by relevance: the fields above combined with how close the typed words are to each other. It's the ordering that answers a typed term best.
The visitor can change it in the results, and the options there are the usual ones: relevance, price, new arrivals and best sellers.
Best sellers only exists if the store shares its sales volume, which is an option in the module. Without that signal there's nothing to order by, and it's the same sharing that feeds the detection of best sellers the search isn't showing, in optimisation.
To force positions on one specific search, this isn't the instrument: the merchandising rules are. Weights apply to the whole catalogue and to every search.
Check before and after
A change of weights is easy to make and hard to judge in your head. What works is this: search three or four representative terms in the playground, note what comes out, change the weights, and search the same terms again.
If the order got worse on two of them and better on one, you find out before the whole store finds out.
Stores in more than one language
Weights are per engine. In a store with Portuguese and French, each engine has its own, and a change made in one doesn't carry over to the other. It's a nuisance when you want the same in both, and it's indispensable when you don't: not every catalogue is translated to the same depth.