Smart Catalog Search on Elasticsearch

Smart Search on Elasticsearch: a fast catalog and a search that finds

The add-on moves your CS-Cart storefront from MySQL to Elasticsearch — search, category listings, product blocks and filters alike. The search itself forgives typos, understands a wrong keyboard layout, knows synonyms and word forms, and finds the product even when the customer names it differently from your catalog.

What breaks in the stock search

The stock CS-Cart search matches a query against the beginning of a string in the database. It does not forgive typos, does not know synonyms, does not realise that a brand typed in Cyrillic is the same brand, and slows down noticeably as the catalog grows. A customer who reaches the search box is ready to buy: an empty result sends them to a competitor.

Wrong keyboard layout: cfvceyu is «samsung» typed on a Russian layout. 9 products found.

Another alphabet: Toshiba typed in Cyrillic still finds Toshiba, and autocomplete suggests the exact name.

More than search: listings, blocks and filters

In CS-Cart every product listing is built by a single core function, and on a large catalog it turns into a heavy database query: a category with filters, the product blocks on the home page, the search results. The add-on intercepts that function entirely — the storefront reads a ready index, while MySQL stays the database you write to.

You choose where Elasticsearch is used with check boxes: product listings, product blocks, search results. Filter blocks follow the listing they belong to.

What the customer sees

• •  A search layer right in the header: products with prices and images grouped by category, plus categories, brands and vendors as separate blocks.
• •  Suggestions as you type — from prepared phrases, from the real search history or from product names.
• •  Recent queries and recently viewed products when the empty field is clicked.
• •  A «did you mean» hint when a query returns nothing.
• •  Animated hints inside the field itself, so the customer can see what to look for.
• •  A full-screen or drop-down layer — your choice, both work on a phone.
• •  A category panel: a list with counts or a filter with checkboxes — the customer narrows the results to the right categories without closing the window.
• •  Price and brand filters inside the window: results narrow in place, with no trip to the results page; on a phone they collapse into buttons and never cover the products.
• •  Two result views: a grid of cards or a dense list of rows — the choice is remembered for the visitor.
• •  Highlighted matches in product names and a correction line when the query was typed in the wrong keyboard layout: "showing results for samsung".
• •  Voice search: a microphone button in the field, speech recognised by the browser.
• •  Keyboard use: "/" opens search, arrows move through the results, Enter opens the product.
• •  A «nothing found» screen with a hint, popular queries and categories instead of an empty page.
• •  A window in your theme's colours and font, with product code and stock on each card.

The category panel: each category shows its number of hits, products are split into groups.

The category filter: ticked categories narrow the results without closing the window.

Nothing found — the customer sees popular queries and categories rather than an empty window.

A query with a typo: results are grouped by category, each group with its own link.

Filters inside the window: price and brand under the category list, results narrow without leaving it.

Dense list: the same results as rows — twice as many products fit on the screen.

Phone: the filters collapse into buttons above the results; "Categories" is tapped — the list opens, price and brand stay collapsed.

What the store owner gets

• •  Query analytics. What was searched for, how many times and what was found. Separately — queries with an empty result: a direct list of what your catalog is missing.
• •  Relevance control. Weight and typo tolerance are set per field: name, SKU, short and full description, product features.
• •  Dictionaries for your niche. Synonyms, stop words and prepared hints, with import and export.
• •  Morphology per language. Each storefront language gets its own word-form algorithm.
• •  Relief for the database. Listings, product blocks and search move to Elasticsearch; MySQL is left to handle writes.
• •  Control over «Often searched». Variants of one query are merged on their own, and an unsuitable query is hidden from the block with one action in the search history.

Search history: queries with a zero in the «Found» column are a direct list of what the catalog is missing.

Relevance is tuned per field: weight and typo tolerance separately.

The synonym dictionary: «telly» and «television» lead to TVs, «trainers» to sneakers.

How it starts

Search settings: keyboard layout and transliteration in one switch, search in descriptions and meta keywords.

Appearance: window layout, category panel views, the number of categories and products per group.

What's new in versions 2.8 and 2.7

• •  2.8. A query of one or two letters is searched as typed, and the other keyboard layout is tried only when the query as typed finds nothing. A word typed only partly in the search window finds products whose names start with it.
• •  2.8. Catalog promotions lower the price in categories, blocks and search, as on the product page, including promotions created after indexing.
• •  2.8. Marketplaces with common products: a common product in categories and blocks shows the price from vendor offers, as without the add-on, and child variations no longer appear as separate cards.
• •  2.8. Two new settings. "Out-of-stock products at the end of lists": products in stock go first, and each group keeps the chosen sorting. The background behind product images in the search window can keep the theme colors, be removed or use a custom color.
• •  2.8. UniTheme2: the color filter and the bottom panel on phones look as in the theme itself, and the header search field and the variation icons on the product page display correctly.
• •  2.7. The storefront no longer hangs when Elasticsearch is down or overloaded: the add-on waits for it at most 5 seconds, switches the catalog and search to the store's own search for a minute and returns to Elasticsearch by itself.
• •  2.7. Marketplaces: a storefront with warehouses and common products no longer hangs, and the filter block in categories with only common products and the autocomplete suggestions no longer go missing.

What the add-on does not do

Stated plainly, so there are no surprises after the purchase.

• •  It does not install Elasticsearch. The add-on connects to it; the server is yours. We can set it up — that is separate work.
• •  It does not work without a scheduler. The index is kept current by cron jobs.
• •  It does not move the product page, the cart or checkout to Elasticsearch: listings, blocks, filters and search come from the index, everything else still comes from MySQL.
• •  It does not restyle your store. The search window takes the theme's colours and font and sets its own layout; a heavily customised theme may need spacing tweaks.
• •  It does not run alongside Cart-Power Live Search: enabling Smart Search disables that add-on automatically.

Frequently asked questions