Search merchandising

Promote, demote, and pin products in search

Pin, boost, bury, or hide products for important searches. Compare natural and adjusted results before activation, and see exactly what changed and which rule caused it.
Kea Search Pro applying pin, boost, bury, and hide actions to adjusted product results

Merchandising rules

Control what shoppers see for important searches

Use precise query rules for campaign searches, broader product rules for ongoing priorities, and hide actions for products that should not appear.

Exact-query rules

For a query such as “summer sale”, pin selected campaign products at the top or limit the rule to products that already match.

Product rules

Boost or bury products that meet defined conditions. A factor above 1 raises their score; a factor below 1 reduces it.

A product rule boosting the CeraVe skincare brand above the natural results

Hide rules

Remove a product from results for an exact query when it should not be shown, without bypassing store visibility safeguards.

Category priorities

Give products from strategic default categories more or less influence while relevance still determines whether they match.

Preview and explain

See what a rule changes before it goes live

Run a shopper query and compare the natural ranking with the adjusted order before activating the rule. Search Pro makes the effect visible instead of hiding it behind an unexplained boost.

  • Preview a rule without changing storefront results.
  • See which products moved, which were hidden, and which rule caused it.
  • Distinguish immediate query rules from score changes that require reindexing.
  • Keep drafts inactive until an authenticated merchant activates them.
Natural and adjusted search results with the responsible rule explained

Relevance guardrails

Business rules, not a replacement for relevance

Merchandising changes product priority inside a valid search result. It does not make an ineligible product available to a shopper.

01

Search engine

Relevance finds the products

The ranking engine analyzes the query and builds the natural result set before merchandising is applied.

02

Merchant control

Rules adjust business priority

Pin, boost, bury, hide, and category priorities change visibility according to explicit merchant rules.

03

Eligibility

Store safeguards remain enforced

Activity, shop and language visibility, shopper filters, category scope, and availability exclusions continue to apply.

When rules conflict, hide takes priority over pin and score changes. Specific-query rules take priority over broader product rules.

See merchandising in action

Open the Back Office demo to inspect merchandising rules and preview how they change results. Open the storefront to see search as a shopper.