Product is not searchable

The buyer browses to Hydraulics › Fittings, sees 4711-A and adds it to the cart. The next morning she types 4711-A into search and gets nothing. The product is enabled, filed, complete and priced; everything on Why a product is not showing up checks out. From here on the problem sits between the catalog and the index.

Common search problems covers the search side: the wrong product first, slow results. This page is the catalog side, causes in the order they turn out to be the answer.

1. The index has not caught up

Search reads a copy of the catalog, updated from catalog events. Normal lag is seconds; after a bulk import, tens of thousands of updates are applied in order and new products appear over several minutes.

Check: if browsing the category finds the product and search does not, it is the index. Give it a few minutes, then open App Studio › Services › Search and compare the document count of the products collection with your enabled product count.

Fix: if the count is still short an hour later, some updates failed. They are retried, and updates that keep failing are held for inspection; read that list first; one malformed value on one product is often the whole story. A full rebuild as a reflex hides the failure instead of fixing it.

2. The word is in a field search does not read

The search document for a product carries the SKU, name, description, manufacturer, EAN and category labels. Other attribute values travel with the document for display; the query is not matched against them. A buyer typing M8x40 finds the product only if that string is in the name or description, or thread_size was made searchable.

Check: read the name and description in the buyer's language. If the word the buyer typed is in neither, this is the cause.

Fix: put the identifying facts in the name (the wholesaler's Sechskantschraube DIN 933 M8x40 A2 exists for a reason), or add the attribute as a searchable field in Configure the index and rebuild.

3. The buyer is on the other language

Name and description are indexed per language. An English name that was never filled gives the English storefront nothing to match.

Check: run the same search on both storefronts.

Fix: translate the name. The untranslated-fields check in Data quality in practice finds the rest; see Translation quality.

4. The code was cut into pieces

The engine cuts text on spaces and punctuation. 4711-A becomes 4711 and a, which matches every article starting with 4711; with typo tolerance on, M8 also matches M6.

Check: search the exact SKU, then 4711 on its own. If the exact string fails and the fragment floods the page, identifier handling is the cause.

Fix: identifier behaviour for sku and the manufacturer part number: typo tolerance off, whole-string match kept. Step 5 in Configure the index.

5. The buyer's word is not your word

The product is called Sechskantschraube; the buyer types Schraube. Or the buyer knows the manufacturer's part number and your catalog holds only your SKU.

Check: the query is in the zero-results report.

Fix: a synonym, or a searchable field for the manufacturer part number. See Synonyms, stop words and rules and Working the zero-results report.

6. The buyer searches a narrower index than you do

Search is per channel and per locale, and a customer-specific assortment is bound to the storefront's search credential. A buyer in a punchout catalog searches a different index than you do.

Check: sign in as that organization and repeat the search.

Fix: an assortment question, step 5 of Why a product is not showing up.

Still nothing

Capture these before you contact support:

• The exact query the buyer typed
• The storefront and language
• The SKU, and whether browsing finds it
• The time of the last import
• The document count of the products collection

Then contact support.