searchabee ships with sensible defaults for search relevance. This guide covers the knobs available when you want more control.
Searchable fields
By default, Meilisearch indexes title, description, vendor, product_type, and tags. Fields appear in ranking priority order — a match on title ranks higher than a match on description.
Console → Search → Fields: add or remove searchable fields (e.g., include a specific metafield).
Synonyms
Shoppers search in their words. “Sneakers” and “trainers” and “runners” often mean the same thing. Synonyms map one term to others so all three find the same products.
Console → Search → Synonyms: list pairs or groups.
Example:
sneaker ↔ trainer ↔ runner
tee ↔ t-shirt ↔ tshirt
Typo tolerance
Meilisearch is typo-tolerant by default (one typo allowed on words ≥5 chars, two typos on words ≥9 chars). This rarely needs adjustment, but you can tighten for brand-name-heavy catalogs (where typos matter) or loosen for long-word catalogs.
Console → Search → Typo tolerance.
Stop words
Common words that should be ignored in search (e.g., “the”, “and”, “for”). Defaults are set per-language based on your shop’s primary locale.
Console → Search → Stop words: override the list for your specific catalog.
Ranking rules
Meilisearch’s ranking combines: word order, proximity, exactness, attribute priority, and custom ranking.
For most merchants, the default order is fine. The one knob worth considering: add a custom ranking on a field like sales_count or rating so popular/well-reviewed products bubble up when relevance is a tie.
Console → Search → Ranking: drag to reorder or add custom fields.
Merchandising rules
Pinned results: given a query, force specific products to appear at the top (e.g., searching “sale” pins the sale collection’s hero items). These live in Search → Pinned results per-query.
Measuring impact
Search → Analytics tracks search terms, click-through rate per term, and zero-result queries. Zero-result queries are often where synonyms pay off — shoppers are searching for something you sell but can’t find it.