Smart search: setup and settings

Smart search opens a drawer under the search box with suggestions for products, categories and pages while the customer is still typing. It corrects typing mistakes, offers popular and recent searches and, when nothing is found, shows where to go next. The defaults are good, so switching it on is enough to start.

The smart search drawer while typing: products with pictures, prices and stock, pages and the button for all results — The drawer while typing. The customer sees products, categories and pages and chooses a row with the keys.

Before you start

the Quick Search module is installed,
a decision on whether you want images, prices, stock status and SKU in the suggestions.

1. Switch it on

Stores › Configuration › Magelan › Quick Search › General

The drawer for a typo: a strip saying results are shown for jacket and a link to search only for the typed word — Typo correction: the drawer shows results for the corrected word and offers to search for what was typed.

Set Enabled to Yes. Below it, Detected search engine is read only and shows which search engine your store uses. The module works with any engine Magento supports.

2. Set up the suggestions

Stores › Configuration › Magelan › Quick Search › Suggestions

Minimum characters is how many characters the customer must type before suggestions appear (recommended 2). Delay (ms) is the pause after the last key before the request is sent.
With Number of products, Number of categories and Number of pages you decide how many results of each kind are shown. A value of 0 switches that kind off. Pages come from the Search CMS Pages module; without it the pages section is not shown.
With the yes/no fields Show image, Show price, Show stock status and Show SKU choose what is visible for each product. The price is the one the catalog shows to the logged in customer, so customer group and customer specific prices are respected. Stock is shown only as "In stock" or "Out of stock", never as an exact quantity.

3. Matching and typing mistakes

Stores › Configuration › Magelan › Quick Search › Matching

Second attempts when nothing is found: if the exact search finds nothing, the module also tries glued words or letters and digits apart. So "m2070" finds "M 2070" and "hp957" finds "HP 957". It is only tried when nothing was found, so working searches are not made worse. The results page uses the same attempts.
Correct typing mistakes: "cannon" finds "canon". Corrections use words from your catalog, and words with digits (model numbers) are never corrected.

4. Popular and recent searches

Stores › Configuration › Magelan › Quick Search › Popular and recent searches

Show popular searches makes the drawer show the most used terms of the store that found products (the count is set by Number of popular searches). Show the customer's recent searches adds the customer's own recent searches (count set by Number of recent searches). These are kept only in the customer's browser and are never sent to the server; the drawer has a "Clear history" button.

5. What is shown when nothing is found

Stores › Configuration › Magelan › Quick Search › No results

Enter a message in Text; {term} is replaced with what the customer typed. Show main categories offers categories to browse instead. If you switch on "Write to us" button, a button is shown and its address goes into Button link (a path such as /contact or a full address).

6. Recording searches

Stores › Configuration › Magelan › Quick Search › Tracking

Record searches feeds the search report (see the next guide). Only the text of a search and counters are stored: no IP address, no customer, no session. Terms with an @ sign, a long run of digits or more than 80 characters are never stored. In Keep for (days) set how long entries are kept; older ones are deleted every night.

7. Advanced

Stores › Configuration › Magelan › Quick Search › Advanced

Cache (seconds): applies to the list of found product ids. Prices, stock and customer groups are never cached. 0 = off.
Full screen below (px): on narrower screens (phones) the search opens over the whole screen. 0 = never.
Accent color: for example #f26322. Empty means the default color of the theme.
Attributes left out: attribute codes, one per line, that the AI review does not see (for example internal notes).

8. Check it

Save the settings, click into the search box in the store and type a product name. The drawer should open with suggestions. If it does not, read the guide "Errors and solutions".

Except for the AI search review group, you can also change the settings per store view or website. After changing content or settings, clear the cache if needed.

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Cookie name	Cookie purpose
PHPSESSID	Preserves the visitor's session state across page requests.
magelan_geo	Remembers that the visitor closed the suggestion of the other language version of the store, so it is not shown again.
form_key	Protects visitor's data from Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks.
guest-view	Stores the Order ID that guest shoppers use to retrieve their order status. Used in “Orders and Returns” widgets.
login_redirect	Preserves the destination page the customer was loading before being directed to log in.
mage-banners-cache-storage	Stores banner content locally to improve performance.
mage-cache-sessid	The value of this cookie triggers the cleanup of local cache storage.
mage-cache-storage	Local storage of visitor-specific content that enables ecommerce functions.
mage-cache-storage-section-invalidation	Forces local storage of specific content sections that should be invalidated.
mage-messages	Tracks error messages and other notifications that are shown to the user, such as the cookie consent message, and various error messages. The message is deleted from the cookie after it is shown to the shopper.
private_content_version	Appends a random, unique number and time to pages with customer content to prevent them from being cached on the server.
section_data_ids	Stores customer-specific information related to shopper-initiated actions such as display wish list, checkout information, etc.
user_allowed_save_cookie, cookie_consent	Stores the user's cookie consent state for the current domain.
X-Magento-Vary	Configuration setting that improves performance when using Varnish static content caching.

Cookie name	Cookie purpose
product_data_storage	Stores configuration for product data related to Recently Viewed / Compared Products.
recently_compared_product	Stores product IDs of recently compared products.
recently_compared_product_previous	Stores product IDs of previously compared products for easy navigation.
recently_viewed_product	Stores product IDs of recently viewed products for easy navigation.
recently_viewed_product_previous	Stores product IDs of recently previously viewed products for easy navigation.
_fbp	This cookie is installed by Facebook to store and track visits across websites.

Cookie name	Cookie purpose
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