Product Search Fuzziness

Different matching rules are applied depending on the Search Fuzziness level that you can set under Search Settings > General. There is a Default fuzziness level but no 'optimal' one as it depends on how your data is structured as well as on how fuzzy or strict you'd like your search results to be.

• Strict level:

  • Article numbers:

    • if a product's article number matches the query exactly, it will be the only product shown in the results. For example, if there are two products with article numbers "A123" and "A123-4" and the search query is "A123", only the first product will be found.

  • Categories:

    • If a search query matches a category, we will show results from this category and ignore other result title matches. For example, searching for "usb drive" will only bring up products classified as USB drive/USB stick and will not show results that partially match the query by the title but belong to a different category, e.g., "usb drive adapter".

• Default level:

  • Article numbers work the same way as with the Default setting.

  • However, if there are only products with article numbers "A123-4" and "A123-5" and the query is "A123", both products will be found in the absence of an exact article number match.

  • Queries such as "iphone8" will be broken into "iphone 8" if nothing is found for the original query.

  • If we don't find any results after breaking up the search query or if partial article number search didn't get us any results either, we'll try fuzzier levels.

• Even more results:

  • We look both for full and partial article number matches. For example, if there are two products with article numbers "A123" and "A123-4" and the query is "A123", both products will be found.

  • If we can't find any matches in categories or product titles, we'll check if product descriptions mention the search terms.

• Get most results:

  • Article numbers work the same way as with the Default setting.

  • If we can't find any matches in categories or product titles, we'll permute (modify) the original query and check if any of these permutations are found in product descriptions.