A search returns nothing: fixing it in three minutes
A customer looks for a product you have in stock, and gets nothing. They won't write to tell you — they'll go elsewhere. Here's how to spot those searches, understand why they fail, and fix them.
Where to find them
In the console, Observe → Searches, the No results tab. The list is sorted by frequency: the top rows are the ones costing you the most.
One useful detail: queries under three characters aren't listed — those are keystrokes in progress, not searches. A short reference like M8 or DN20, however, is counted.
Three causes, three fixes
1. The word doesn't exist in your catalog
The most common case. Your customer types drywall, your catalog says plasterboard. The engine is looking for a word written nowhere.
The fix takes one line: Optimise → Engine vocabulary, Synonyms tab. Enter drywall, plasterboard. Searching for "drywall" will now find your plasterboard.
Direction matters. By default the rule only works one way: "drywall" finds plasterboard, without "plasterboard" pulling up drywall. That's almost always what you want. Tick Works the other way round too when both words are genuinely interchangeable — tshirt and tee-shirt, for instance.
2. The word is trade vocabulary the engine can't read
Your customers type references: M8, DN20, A4. These aren't words, they're dimensions, standards, grades. An engine treating them as plain text splits them badly and misses products you do have in stock.
Your sector's rule pack already covers most of this. For vocabulary specific to you, go to Engine vocabulary, Trade terms tab. There you declare that a prefix followed by a number denotes a reference, and the engine recognises it everywhere.
3. You don't sell that product
Not every empty search is a mistake. If your customers regularly look for something you don't carry, that's commercial information, not a technical fault.
This list tells you what your market expects from you. Some merchants find their next catalog additions there.
Checking it's fixed
After a fix, go to Optimise → Search merchandising and type the query. You immediately see what your visitor will see.
The Why these results? link details the reasoning: words recognised, typos caught, what weighed in the ranking. If a product still doesn't appear, that's where you'll see why.
Making it a habit
This list takes two minutes to review, once a week. It's probably the best ratio of time spent to sales recovered in your entire search setup.