Lost your Search & Discovery synonyms? Looking for 5 stores to test a fix (free while testing)

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A developer is seeking five Shopify stores to test a free app addressing the retirement of manual synonyms in Shopify Search & Discovery and overly broad search results. The app aims to restore synonym groups, allow import of old synonym lists, enforce exact matching across fields like title, tags, product type, vendor, or SKU, redirect exact SKU searches to the product, and provide an admin test page.

The developer clarified that although Dawn and Horizon themes are being tested first, the app hooks into Shopify’s standard search form and may work on most themes. Each participating store’s theme will be checked before activation, with an off switch available.

A jewelry search example was discussed: searching “sterling” may incorrectly show plated or unrelated metal items. Exact matching would remove products that do not mention “sterling,” but items labeled “sterling silver plated” would still match, so exclusion-word handling was identified as a possible needed feature. Testing remains open and unresolved.

1

Since mid-September a lot of merchants have reported two things: the Synonyms section in Search & Discovery was retired, and searches now return hundreds of loosely related products (the “duck earrings shows moons and stars” problem).

I’m a developer and I’m building a small app for stores that want to keep Shopify’s own search page, filters and theme, but get control back:

  • Synonym groups again, with a paste-your-old-list import
  • Exact matching: a search only returns products that have the words in the title, tags, product type, vendor or SKU. If nothing matches, the shopper gets the normal results, so a typo doesn’t end on an empty page
  • Searching an exact SKU goes straight to that product
  • A test page in the admin that shows what a search will return before shoppers see it

Honest limits: exact matching switches off Shopify’s typo tolerance for that search, the dropdown that appears while typing isn’t changed, and Dawn and Horizon are the first themes I’m supporting.

It’s free while testing. After launch there will be a free plan (10 synonym groups) and paid plans at $9 and $19 a month.

If this sounds useful, reply here with what you sell and one search that’s broken for you.

2

Hi @codeofsagar Welcome To Shopify Community So The synonym retirement has honestly been a bigger hit than Shopify seems to realize losing manual control over loosely related fuzzy matching means niche or handmade product names things without obvious category overlap surface completely unrelated results now. The exact-match fallback-to-normal-results logic is the right call, avoiding empty pages on a typo is the actual hard part of this problem. Since it’s theme-tied for now, curious if the plan is to expand beyond Dawn/Horizon based on demand, or if most merchants reporting this issue are already on one of those two. please do not forget to like and mark it solution

3

Thanks @Mustafa_Ali. It only hooks into Shopify’s standard search form, so it should work on most themes, not just those two. Dawn and Horizon are simply the ones I’m testing first. For each store that tries it, I’ll check their theme before switching anything on, and there’s an off switch if something looks wrong.

4

@codeofsagar That’s reassuring the off-switch plus checking each store’s theme before enabling shows you’re being careful about not breaking something unexpectedly. Since you mentioned wanting real broken-search examples: for a store selling handmade jewelry, something like a search for a material name e.g. sterling often surfaces plated or unrelated metal pieces mixed in with actual sterling items, since the current matching doesn’t distinguish precisely enough. Might be a useful test case if you want a real-world example beyond the duck earrings one.

5

Thanks, that’s a good one to test. Exact matching would remove the pieces that don’t mention sterling at all, but a title like “sterling silver plated” would still match, so that case needs a way to exclude words. I’ll note it.