How to enable Synonym search

📖 In this article, we show you how to enable the Synonym search feature in Boost AI Search & Discovery.

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Introduction

You want to help your customers find the product they are looking for, even when the search term they use is not exactly the word in your store data. For example, you want the search to return "maternity pants" when customers submit a query "pregnant pants". 

Our app allows you to set up a robust library of synonyms, helping your customers avoid "no results" pages and discover all the relevant product results, no matter what search terms they enter. 

Our AI-powered Search add-on goes through your product data and customers' shopping data to analyze and generate relevant synonyms that help boost conversion rates.


Add synonyms

Our app allows you to add synonyms based on your needs manually. To add synonyms to your search engine:
  1. From the app’s admin, go to Search > Standard Search > Manual Synonyms
  2. Click + Add new

  1. In the Search terms field, enter the term that when your customers search for, your search engine will return products with its synonym settings
  2. In the drop-down of Direction, select one type of synonym based on your needs. Our app has two types of synonyms:
    • Bi-direction (Two-way synonyms) with the symbol "<=>": You can use this type when you want the search term to find its synonyms or the other way around. The search term and words in its list of synonyms can be replaced by others. For example, let's say you create a synonym list as "beachwear, swimwear" for "bikini". By applying regular synonyms, a search for "bikini" returns products with "beachwear" and "swimwear", and a search for "swimwear" returns products with "bikini" and "beachwear". 
    • Uni-direction with the symbol "=>": This type is helpful when you want the search term to find its synonyms, but not the reverse. Let's say you want "smartphone" to find "Samsung" and "iPhone" so that Samsung phones will show up on all "smartphone" searches. However, you do not want the reverse. Searching for "iPhone" should not show all smartphones from other brands.
  1. In the Synonyms field, enter a comma-separated list of words that should be considered synonyms of the defined search term. One search term can have unlimited synonyms
  2. [Optional] Check the Suggestion list box if you want our app to automatically copy the search term to our Suggestion Dictionary where you can customize its ranking in the suggested search bar results
When you add a search term to the Suggestion list, all its synonyms will be given equal priority. This way, even if customers search for terms that aren't in your store, they can still get search suggestions as well as relevant products.

When you edit the search term in the Suggestion list, it will not be automatically updated in the Suggestion Dictionary. Please refer to this guide to edit your Suggestion dictionary manually.

  1. Click Save synonyms
  2. Click on Test your search to see your changes

💡 Currently, the app’s results display algorithms only scan for synonyms in the data fields, including Product Title, Vendor, Product Type, Product Option, and Tag. To maximize the search optimization, these data fields may be missing a few elements compared to the scanned data fields when you enter keywords directly into the search field.

For example, normally, when you type "bathing suit" in the search bar, the search engine will browse through searchable attributes, including product title, product type, vendor, tag, product options, SKU, barcode, and description. 

But now think about designing a set of keywords such as "bikini" <=> "bathing suit", "swimsuit". In this case, when the search query is “bikini”, only the products, collections, pages & blog posts containing the "bathing suit" in Product Title, Vendor, Product Type, Product Option, and Tag show up in the search results.

Edit synonyms

To edit your synonyms from the app's dashboard:

  1. From the app’s admin, go to Search > Standard Search > Manual Synonyms.
  2. Click Edit icon.
  3. Toggle the Status button of any set of synonyms that you want to enable and disable.
  4. Customize the search terms, the types of synonyms, and the list of synonyms to your liking. 
Remember that the suggestion list won’t sync accordingly as you edit the search terms. To edit the suggestion list and keep syncing synonyms, you can refer to this guide to edit your Suggestion dictionary manually.
  1. [Optional] Click on the Delete icon if you want to totally remove it from the app dashboard. Then click Delete.

Import and export synonyms

Our app allows you to export a large number of synonyms at one time. This feature can help you to create a backup of your synonym library, exchange synonym settings between different Shopify stores that have Product Filter & Searched installed, and edit your synonyms in bulk.
To export the synonym library from your Shopify store:
1. From the app’s admin, go to Search > Synonyms.
2. Click Export under the Synonyms heading.
3. Click Export in the Export synonyms to CSV file pop-up to receive the CSV file of your existing synonym settings.
4. Double-check the downloaded file.
The extracted CSV file should be in the following format:
"Search Term";"Synonyms";"Bi Direction";"Enabled"
"Sample01";"sample01a,sample01b";true;true
"Sample02";"sample02a,sample02b";false;true
"Sample03";"sample03a,sample03b";true;true
After exporting your synonyms and making changes to the CSV file, you can import the updated CSV file into the app's admin. To import synonyms using a CSV file:
1. From the app’s admin, go to Search > Synonyms.
2. Prepare your CSV file with synonyms that you want to import into the app. You can download the sample to understand all fields that your CSV file can contain.
Note: You should pay attention to the required fields (highlighted). For fields containing special characters, you have to include these fields in "quote" to avoid any possible errors from being displayed. You can use Notepad, TextEdit, or any similar text editing app to check if the format is correct.
3. Click Import under the Synonyms heading.
4. Click the Choose file button and select the CSV file that you want to import.
5. Click Upload.
6. You will receive a message about new synonyms that the CSV file contains. Check this notification to make sure all synonyms that you want to import are recognized. Then click Import.
7. After successfully importing, you will receive the following message:

8. You can continue to import synonyms by clicking Import more synonyms and repeating the above steps.
9. Select View all synonyms to make sure all the synonyms have been added to the app’s admin successfully.

Tutorial video

This tutorial can help you grasp how you can integrate synonym searching into search solutions.



If you have any questions or need further assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to our dedicated support team at support@boostcommerce.net.