Search & discovery

Filter & Search is where you control how buyers find products on your storefront — the search box, predictive suggestions, the filter rail beside your collections, and the rules that override or rerank results for specific queries. It is a dedicated admin section, not a single settings page, with its own set of tabs.

Find it under Online store → Filter & Search in the store sidebar. The section opens on the Filters tab and carries a row of sub-tabs across the top:

• Filters — reusable filter sets (the facet rail on collection, all-products, and search pages).
• Search Configuration — which fields are searched, predictive-search sources, results per page, default sort, and no-results behaviour.
• Pinnings — pin specific products to the top of a search query.
• Redirects — send a search query straight to a chosen URL.
• Synonyms — treat different words as the same search term.

Note

These tools shape what buyers see in storefront search and filtering only. Editing this section never changes a product’s actual data — it changes how that data is indexed, matched, and presented.

Search Configuration

The Search Configuration tab governs the search engine itself. Open it from the sub-tabs, change what you need, and use Save Changes (the Reset button discards unsaved edits). An “You have unsaved changes” banner appears until you save.

Search fields

The Search Fields card lists the fields a query can match: Title, SKU, Brand, Type, Tags, Options, Description, and Metafields. Toggle a field off to exclude it from matching, and drag the handle to reorder — fields nearer the top carry higher priority in ranking. A green Active badge marks fields that are currently searched.

General settings

1. Fuzzy Search — when on, near-miss spellings still match (for example, a small typo in a product title). Leave it on unless you need exact matching.

2. Results Per Page — how many products a results page shows. The range is 10 to 100, in steps of 10 (default 20).

3. Default Sort — the order results use before a buyer chooses their own: Relevance (default), Price: Low to High, Price: High to Low, Newest First, Title: A-Z, or Title: Z-A.

4. Out of Stock at Bottom — pushes sold-out products to the end of results instead of mixing them in.

Predictive search

Predictive search is the live drop-down that appears as a buyer types. Toggle which content types it suggests: Include Search Queries, Include Collections, Include Pages, and Include Blog Posts. (Product suggestions always appear.) These same toggles drive the predictive-search API.

No results behaviour

Decide what the storefront shows when a search returns nothing, and when the search box is opened empty:

• When no results found — Suggest Keywords and/or Suggest Products.
• When search is empty — show Popular Keywords and/or Popular Products.

Filter sets

A filter set is a reusable group of filter attributes — the facets buyers use to narrow a collection or search page (Price, Brand, Colour, Availability, and so on). You build a set once, target it at the right pages, and add the individual attributes inside it.

The Filters tab shows summary tiles (total sets, Active, Search, Specific Collections) and a list of every set with badges for its priority and targeting.

Create a filter set

1. On the Filters tab, choose Create Filter Set.

2. Under Basics, give the set a Filter Set Name (an internal label your team recognises), leave Enabled on, and set a Priority. Higher priority wins when more than one set could apply to the same page.

3. Under Targeting, choose where the set appears:

   • All Collections — available on every collection page.
   • All Products — applies on the all-products page.
   • Search Page — applies on storefront search results.

4. When All Collections is off, pick Included Collections and Excluded Collections to scope the set to exact collections. Use the collection picker for each list.

5. Choose Create Filter Set. You land on the set’s edit page, where you add the attributes.

Tip

A disabled filter set stays saved but stops applying — useful for staging a set before it goes live, or pausing one without losing its configuration.

Add filter attributes

Each attribute is one facet in the rail. Open a filter set and add attributes from a Source Type:

• Standard Field — a built-in product attribute: Price, Sale Percentage, Availability, Brand, Product Type, Custom Product Type, Category, Collection, Tag, Location, Fulfillment Method, or Customer Rating.
• Variant Option — a variant option name from your catalogue (such as Colour or Size).
• Custom Metafield — a metafield definition. Only text, numeric, boolean, color, money, rating, and date fields can be used for filtering. See metafields.

For each attribute you also set:

• Label — the heading buyers see (e.g. “Colour”).
• Display Type — checkbox, range, dropdown, radio, or box.
• Sort Mode — Natural, Alphabetical (A-Z / Z-A), Product Count (Low to High / High to Low), or Manual (drag values into order).
• Value Logic — OR (any selected) or AND (all selected) for how multiple ticked values combine.
• Show All Values vs. a hand-picked list, plus Show Product Counts, Collapsed by Default, and an optional Tooltip (under 150 characters).

Note

Range display is reserved for numeric attributes such as Price; its values are always shown and its presentation is fixed to text. Swatch and image presentation are for value-based facets like Colour.

Storefront URL contract

Themes submit filter and sort controls with method="get". Sellerlane uses the portable Shopify storefront parameter grammar rather than exposing internal filter-definition IDs:

Source	Parameter
Availability	filter.v.availability
Price	filter.v.price.gte and filter.v.price.lte
Tag	filter.p.tag
Product type	filter.p.product_type
Vendor	filter.p.vendor
Product category	filter.p.t.category
Variant option	filter.v.option.OPTION_NAME
Product metafield	filter.p.m.NAMESPACE.KEY
Variant metafield	filter.v.m.NAMESPACE.KEY
Sellerlane product kind	filter.p.sellerlane_product_kind

Prices are decimal major-currency amounts. Product categories use exact taxonomy/category IDs, not category display names; a generated __-joined value represents the allowed category subtree list. Repeated values use the filter definition’s OR/AND behavior, while different filter sources combine with AND.

Sellerlane accepts at most 25 active filters and 100 values per filter. Changing or clearing filters resets the relevant pagination parameter. Filter facets are suppressed when a collection contains more than 5,000 products or a search has more than 100,000 matches, while the product results remain available.

Metafield filters are definition-gated

Product and variant metafield parameters are accepted only when an enabled, trusted filter definition publishes that exact namespace and key. Variant values are indexed, queried, and aggregated in one nested variant scope, so the returned product URL and featured media identify a matching variant.

Standard product attributes are not available yet

Sellerlane does not publish Shopify standard-product-attribute filters such as filter.v.t.shopify.fabric. The filter configuration does not yet persist the enabled taxonomy attribute identity, and custom attribute values do not have a store-owned Metaobject GID mapping. Sellerlane therefore rejects this grammar instead of guessing from an option name.

See Shopify theme compatibility for the exact filter, tag-preservation, pagination, and fail-closed rules.

Pinnings

A pin rule forces chosen products to the top of search results for specific queries — useful for promotions, hero products, or seasonal pushes. The Pinnings tab lists your rules with their query terms and pinned-product counts.

1. On the Pinnings tab, choose Create Pin Rule.

2. Add one or more Query Terms — any of these search terms triggers the rule.

3. Choose Pinned Products with the product selector. At least one product is required.

4. Save the rule. Set its Priority if you run more than one rule, and use Manage Products on the rule to adjust pins later.

Redirects

A search redirect sends a buyer who searches a given query straight to a URL, instead of showing results — for example, sending a search for “sale” to your sale collection.

1. On the Redirects tab, choose Create Redirect.

2. Add the Search Queries that should trigger it — any one of them matches.

3. Enter a Target URL. This can be root-relative (for example /collections/summer-sale) or an absolute http/https URL. Both forms are validated.

4. Save. Set Priority if several redirects could match the same query.

Synonyms

A synonym group makes the search engine treat different words as equivalent, so buyers find products whether they search “sneakers” or “trainers”, “sofa” or “couch”.

Two-way

Add Query Terms and Synonym Terms. With One Way Synonym off (the default, shown as Two Way), all terms are interchangeable in both directions.

One-way

Turn One Way Synonym on so the query terms expand to the synonym terms, but not the reverse — handy when a brand or model name should match a generic term, but not the other way around.

Each group needs at least one query term and one synonym term. Open the Synonyms tab and choose Create Synonym Group to begin.

Caution

Synonyms and pin rules change ranking and matching, but they never override a product’s availability or your storefront policies. A pinned or synonym-matched product still only appears if it is published and in scope for the page.

How it fits together

When a buyer searches, the engine first checks for a matching redirect and, if found, sends them onward. Otherwise it runs the query against your enabled search fields (expanded by any synonyms), applies pin rules to lift chosen products, and orders the rest by your default sort and field priority. On collection, all-products, and search pages, the filter set targeted at that page renders the facet rail beside the results.

Next steps

Predictive search API

The developer reference for the live search drop-down driven by your settings. Predictive search API

Product recommendations API

Surface related and complementary products beyond search. Product recommendations

Metafields

Define the custom fields you can expose as filter attributes. Metafields

Theme compatibility

Exact Shopify-style filter parameters, caps, and known differences. Shopify theme compatibility

Collections

Group products so your filter sets and search have collections to target. Collections