How search works

PersonalizerAI replaces your theme's search with AI search. This page explains how the app matches products to a query, in plain language.

The three layers of a search

Each search runs through up to three layers. Your plan decides which layers are active.

This is what happens when a shopper submits a query:

Redirects and curations are your controls. See Synonyms & redirects and Ranking, curations & facets.

Where you turn the layers on and off

The Basics tab of the Search screen has five switches:

• AI query understanding — turns price limits, "on sale", "in stock", sort words, and your vendors, product types, colors and tags in English queries into filters and sorting. When it is off, every word the shopper typed is matched as typed: "boots under 50" searches for the words "under" and "50". When it is on, it shows the tag controls below.
• Semantic search — the meaning-based matching layer.
• Instant autocomplete — search suggestions while the shopper types. See Search widgets.
• Typo tolerance — fuzzy matching for misspelled queries.
• Personalized search ranking (Growth plan and up) — orders the results by each shopper's brand and category interests. The order changes only between products of equal relevance. A shopper who browses one brand sees that brand first among equally good matches.

A switch that your plan does not include is disabled. The row then names the plan that includes it.

1. Open the PersonalizerAI dashboard.
2. Go to Search.
3. Open the Basics tab.
4. Turn each switch on or off. Each change saves at once.

The same tab holds the Out-of-stock products control. That control applies to your search results and to your recommendation widgets. See Ranking, curations & facets.

The five search feature switches on the Basics tab.

Choose which tags AI query understanding uses

AI query understanding can use your product tags as filters. When a shopper's words match one of your tags, the results show only the products with that tag. For example, "premium snowboard" shows only the snowboards with the tag "Premium".

This is useful when your tags describe your products to shoppers. Many stores also use tags for their own work, for example "imported-2024" or "needs-photo". A shopper's word can match such a tag by accident and hide good results. You control which tags AI query understanding uses.

The controls are under the AI query understanding switch. You see them only when that switch is on.

• Let AI search filter by tags — turn this off to stop all tag filters. Do this if your tags are only for your own use.
• Tags AI search never filters on — the tags that AI query understanding must not use. These tags also do not show in the tag filter on your storefront, in search results and on collection pages. Click Add a tag and select a tag from the list. The list shows each tag with the number of products that have it. To use a tag again, click the × on its chip.

AI query understanding never uses a tag that is on more than half of your products. Such a tag removes almost no products, so it does not help the shopper. The list marks these tags On most products — skipped automatically. You cannot add them, because they are already skipped.

1. Open the PersonalizerAI dashboard.
2. Go to Search.
3. Open the Basics tab.
4. Make sure AI query understanding is on.
5. Turn Let AI search filter by tags on or off.
6. To stop one tag, click Add a tag and select it.

Each change saves at once. The next search uses it.

The tag controls under the AI query understanding switch.

Typo tolerance

Shoppers make typing errors. With Typo tolerance on, a query like "snekers" still finds sneakers. The app allows up to 2 typos per word by default. You can lower this limit on the Language tab with Max typos per token. Turn Typo tolerance off to require exact spelling.

Your store language

The app must know which language your product text is in. It uses this to split your product titles and descriptions into words when it builds the search index.

The app sets this for you when you install it. It uses the primary language of your Shopify store. You do not have to do anything.

This matters most for Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Thai. These languages do not put spaces between words. If the app does not know the language, it treats a full product title as one single word. A shopper then finds a product only if they type the title from the very first character. A word from the middle of the title finds nothing.

For languages that use spaces, such as English, French or German, the app already splits words correctly. The language setting changes very little for these stores.

If the app shows you a language warning

You can see a warning on your dashboard, or on the Language tab, that says search is not set up for your language. This happens for two reasons:

• You installed the app before it set the language for you.
• You changed the primary language of your Shopify store after you installed the app.

The warning has one button. The button sets the language and rebuilds your search index.

You can also set the language yourself at any time. Use the Store language control on the Language tab. This also rebuilds your search index. Before it saves, the app asks you to confirm the rebuild. A change to Stemming, Token separators or Symbols to index also rebuilds the index, and the app asks you to confirm those too. Each Stemming line is one word, a comma and its root, for example running,run. If a line is not in that form, the app says so and does not save that line.

If your store sells in more than one language, the app uses your primary language for the index. Set it to the language that most of your product titles use.

The language warning on the Language tab, with its one-click fix.

Spelling and AI understanding

Typo tolerance handles misspellings while preserving the shopper's original words. AI query understanding extracts price limits, "on sale", "in stock", sorting, and your vendors, product types, colors and tags from English queries; it does not correct spelling, generate replacement search text or synonyms. Whatever it applies is shown to the shopper: each inferred filter appears above the results as a pill marked "(from your search)", and an inferred sort shows as the selected sort. The shopper can remove any of them; the search then runs again without that one, and the rest stay. Add merchant synonyms explicitly under Synonyms when two terms should match.

When a search finds nothing

A zero-result search is not a dead end. The results area then shows:

• A short "no results" message.
• Up to three other searches under Did you mean:, when the app finds close words. The shopper presses one to run it. See Search widgets.
• A button to clear the active filters, when filters caused the empty result.
• A Popular right now block with up to 4 trending products from your store, when the app can load their prices in time.

The Insights tab of the Search screen lists your zero-result queries. Its Relevance suggestions panel picks out the frequent ones and suggests what to do. Each zero-result query has Add synonym and Add redirect buttons that open the form with the query already filled in. See Ranking, curations & facets and Synonyms & redirects.

The zero-results state with the trending products loaded, so the shopper can continue.

What happens over your monthly search limit

Each plan includes a monthly number of searches. Over that number, search continues with the keyword layer only. The AI layers pause until the next month. Search never stops, and there are no extra charges. See Plans, billing & limits.

On a plan with AI search, the Basics tab shows how many AI searches your store used this month, and your limit. Near the limit, a banner appears above the switches. At the limit, the AI query understanding, Semantic search and Personalized search ranking switches show "Paused for the rest of the month". The switches stay on, and these layers start again next month.