Does predictive search type query will not work if you have not yet used it before?
Theme used: Focal
It has search drawer built-in and I am pretty sure a lot already used the search function. I am building a custom search but I want to show some common searches results.
/search/suggest.json?q=${query}&resources[type]=query
So if your predictive search type=query is coming up empty, here’s what’s probably going on:
No One’s Searched Yet – Shopify won’t suggest stuff if there’s no search history. If your store is new or no one’s really searched much, it might just have nothing to pull from.
Theme Quirks – The Focal theme has a built-in search drawer, but it might not fully support type=query. Some themes don’t play nice with Shopify’s predictive search API.
Indexing Takes Time – If your store/products were just added, Shopify might still be processing everything. Give it a bit.
API Might Just Not Do That – Shopify’s predictive search is mostly for products, collections, etc. The type=query part isn’t always guaranteed to return results unless there’s real search data to work with.
What You Can Try:
Test with type=product instead of type=query and see if that works.
Search a few times manually on your site to see if Shopify starts picking things up.
Check your theme’s settings to make sure it’s not blocking the API call.
If it’s still not working, it might just be how Shopify rolls.