Search CMS pages: what is searched and what is not

A short overview of what the CMS page search finds and what it does not, so you know how to prepare your pages so shoppers find them.

What is searched

• The page title, the main heading in the content, the meta title, meta keywords and meta description, and the page text.
• Text from the Page Builder editor: the markup is removed, the plain text stays.
• Only active pages assigned to the current store view or to all store views. If a store view has its own page with the same URL key, that one is shown.
• Optionally, published Magelan Blog posts (setting “Search blog posts too”).

How it searches

• Accents and capitals do not matter. “RETURNS” finds “Returns”, “vracilo” finds “Vračilo”.
• All the words. Pages that contain all the words come first. If a search of three or more words finds none, pages with at least half of the words are shown.
• Short and common words do not count: words under 2 characters and words such as “the”, “and”, “in” or “und”, unless the whole search is made of them.
• Extra spaces and punctuation do not break the search; % and _ are searched literally.
• Ranking: an exact title ranks highest, then the term in the title, in the main heading, in the meta data and in the text (more occurrences count more, up to a cap). With an equal score, the title decides.

When the search finds no products, the pages block stands above the no-results message, whatever position you chose.

What is not searched

• Content from blocks and widgets. Text a page pulls in through the {{block}} and {{widget}} directives or from CMS blocks is not searched, because directives are not executed when the list is built. Such a page is found by its title, and the settings list it under “Pages without text”. If you want it found by its content, write the key sentences directly into the page or the meta description.
• Other word forms. Matching is by parts of words, without stemming: “runs” does not find “running”, and “mat” also finds “format”. Write important terms in the form shoppers search for, or add them to the meta keywords.
• Other blogs, for example FishPig WordPress or Magefan Blog.
• Category descriptions. The module searches CMS pages and blog posts, not categories.
• Disabled pages, pages of other store views and pages you excluded.
• Suggestions while typing. Pages are shown on the search results page, not in the suggestions drop-down under the search box.

Stores with many pages

With hundreds of long pages the search gets slower. Keep the list short with exclusions (also with a “*”, for example archive-*) and the minimum text length, see Search CMS pages: settings.