Search Preview

Search Preview allows you to explore all of the under-the-hood functionality of Athos Commerce. With it, you can easily view your product data, understand why products show up where they do, see where search terms match your product data, discover how synonyms work, and more.

Using the Interface

Searching

Click the search box at the top where "Type a query" is shown, and type in a word, then press <Enter> to search the catalog. This search box will function exactly as it does on the live site, with some bonus behind-the-scenes details available for merchants. 

Pagination

Pagination at the top right and bottom right of product listings can be used to navigate through large sets of products. 

Filtering

Click the Filters button at the top right to open a Filters panel that will allow you to refine the current product set down to more specific products. These are the same filters that are set up on the live site through the Filtering page.

Click the "x" at the top right of this panel to collapse the Filters panel. When you apply a filter, the system will update product results dynamically in real-time. Under the search bar and at the top of the Filters panel, you will see any filters that have been applied. In this example, we have applied filters for color (blue), gender (men's), and size (32).

At the bottom of the Filters panel, click the "View Results" button to close the panel and display all matching products, or click the "Clear All" button to clear the selected filters.

Options

Click the Options button at the top of the panel on the far left; this will allow you to refine the products you see.

Click the Close Panel button to hide this panel.

View

Click either the "Advanced" or "Simple" toggles under "View" to change how products appear in the preview.

• Advanced = Clicking "Advanced" will display the product image and title, price, product type, hard sorts, search logic, and NLP logic applied to the product.
• Simple = Clicking "Simple" will display the product image and title, price, and match strength.

Click the "View Details" button at the top of the product card to see Matches and Product Data for the selected item.

In the example shown below for Apex swim trunks, the Advanced view provides details about the product type, hard sorts, search logic, and NLP logic. 

Product Type

The Product Type is determined by Athos based on the data sent. This is used as one of the primary methods of search relevancy scoring, so searches that match the product type will rank higher. 

Hard Sorts

This section shows you all fields and data points associated with the selected product.

Search Logic

The Search Logic section shows how each product scored in several categories. If a product scores for a category in this search, it will show a checkmark. If it didn't, it will show a greyed out dash. (Go here to read more about search logic.)

• Query Terms Found: The number of searched words found in a product's data. For most Athos sites, all terms being found is a search requirement for best relevancy (called "strict search").
• Subject Match: There's a solid search match on the product type.
• Modifier Match: There's a loose search match around the product type.
• Phrase Match: Whether multiple words from a search were found close together in the product's data as well.

Example: Search for "red dress" when a product has "red summer dress" in its title. 

If your account has had a "loose search" mode enabled, there is no longer the requirement of all search words being found in products. In many cases, sites only use a loose search as a fallback when no results would be found with all words (called "Expanded Search"). In this case, you'll see the number of query terms found at the top of Search Logic.

In this example, "amazing" was not found in any products, but both "red" and "dress" were found in some products. Therefore, it shows "2 out of 3 Query Terms Found".

NLP Logic

The NLP Logic section shows if there was a product discovery match for this item using natural language processing (NLP).

Boosts

If the account has set up Product Boost Rules that apply to this context, boost rule values will be shown at the bottom of the advanced details on each product. If there are too many boost rules to display all of them in the product card, the system will offer a "Show more" link, which you can click to see additional boost rules. On search result pages, boosts always sub-sort after relevancy ties. 

Product Awareness, Merchandising, and Query Replacements

If there are additional details affecting merchandising, the influence will be displayed here.

Intellisuggest Elevations

IntelliSuggest elevates 10 products to the top of relevant search results based on customer engagement (clicks, views, add-to-carts, and purchases). These query-specific elevations are designed to surface the most relevant products for shoppers, improving the customer experience and reinforcing relevance through behavior-driven ranking.

Integrated Spell Correction

This function will show what the query would look like with or without spell correction applied.

Admin Options

Experimental

Select the "Strict" or "Loose" toggle to determine which search results are displayed.

• Strict = Every search term must be found in a product's searchable data to show up in results, which ensures the best relevancy
• Loose = At least one searched word must be found in a product, but not all searched terms; sometimes used as a fallback when there would be zero search results

Use Base Image URL

Toggle this setting from "Off" to the other option to utilize the default image configured for this store.

Fields

Click the Fields button in the panel on the far left; this will allow you to refine the products you see.

Click the Close Panel button to hide this panel.

Click the drop-down menu to select specific fields for product properties. Read more about this function here.

Sources

Click the Sources button in the panel on the far left; this will allow you to refine the products you see.

Click the Close Sources button to close this panel.

Sorting

Use the Sort drop-down at the top left of product listings to sort products by any order configured for the account in the Sort Options page.

Sort options shown here will match what has been configured in Search Optimizations\Sorting.

Viewing Search Matches

Once you've searched for something, you can access details about why products appeared the way they did. 

Match Strength

The match strength bar below each product gives a high-level view into how well products ranked in what you searched for. Products with the same bar level are considered equally relevant to each other.

View Details

Clicking the "View Details" button below the match bar opens a detailed explanation of what matched where.

Matches

Click the "Matches" button to see matches.

View Details: Title

The top left of the details pop-up lists which product you are viewing match details for. 

View Details: You searched for…

The "You searched for…" column breaks down every word you searched for separately to show where each word was found. A reminder of the full search can be seen at the top left next to "Search for".

View Details: Synonyms applied

The "Synonyms Applied" column will show any Synonyms that caused a match in the search. In this example, there is a synonym set up for "trunk", "trunks", and "apex". Those synonyms were found in multiple parts of the product data.

View Details: Matches in

The "Matches In" column shows which product properties the search term was found in. When searching for "trunk", the system also looked for and found a match in the product type and NLP. When searching for "trunk", the system also looked for and found "apex" in this product's handle, title, tags, and collection_name.

Showing Product Properties

Product fields (properties) can be viewed for each product in the product list. To select which fields to view, click the Fields button on the left to open the panel.

Select fields from the drop-down.

Search this drop-down by typing in part of the name of a field.

Select any fields from the drop-down that you wish to display. Remove fields from being displayed by clicking the "x" to the right of the field name.

Once a field is selected, it will appear beneath every product on the page, showing the value(s) each product has for that field.