---
title: Search Configuration and Search Engine Optimization | Shopware Community Hub
description: >-
Learn how to make your products easy to find in your online store. Discover
how to set up search features, improve your store’s visibility on search
engines,…
canonical_url: 'https://hub.shopware.com/learn/unit/user-process-search-seo'
---
# Search Configuration and Search Engine Optimization
- Understand how internal and external search functions work in an ecommerce store.
- Configure Shopware’s search settings, including keyword weighting, AND/OR logic, and minimum term length.
- Optimize product metadata and structure for better search rankings and customer discoverability.
- Use Live Search and Shopware Intelligence search features to enhance product search accuracy and user experience.
- Set up and test SEO configurations including canonical URLs and redirects to improve external visibility.
- Apply real-world examples to enhance both in-store search results and search engine rankings.
# Search Functionality Overview
## Why Search Matters
Search is like a helpful store assistant in your online shop. It helps customers find exactly what they're looking for by matching their search with your products. It looks at:
- **Product Information**: Names, descriptions, and other details.
- **Hidden Details**: Keywords and other information that helps with accurate search results, also called **Metadata**
### Key Points
- **Product Setup**: Make sure your products have clear descriptions and relevant keywords
- **Show Important Items First**: Set up your search to show your most important products at the top
- **Customer Behavior**: Most shoppers only look at the first page of search results
Search works in two ways:
1. **Inside Your Store**: Helping customers find products in your shop
2. **Outside Your Store**: Making your shop easy to find on Google and other search engines
- **Product Ranking**: Different parts of your product (like name or description) have different importance in search results. For example, if someone searches for "guitar," products with "guitar" in their name will show up higher than those with "guitar" only in the description.
- **Multiple Matches**: If a search term appears in several places (like both the name and description), the product will rank higher in the results.
## Setting Up "Inside Your Store" Search
### Finding Search Settings
Go to `Settings -> Search` in your store's admin area.
### Main Sections
- **General**: Set up how search works and what it looks for
- **Live Search**: Try out search results in real-time
- **AI Assistant**: Turn on smart search features that understand natural language and images
### Setting Up Search
1. **How Search Works**:
- "AND" Search: Shows only items that have ALL the words you type. For example, searching for "electric AND guitar" will only show items that have both words. This is good when customers know exactly what they want.
- "OR" Search: Shows items that have ANY of the words you type, with the most relevant matches first. For example, searching for "electric OR guitar" will show items with either word. This is good when customers are open to different options.
**Use AND search when:**
- You want very specific results
- Customers know exactly what they're looking for
- You have many similar products
For example, if someone searches for "fender stratocaster maple neck," they'll only see products that have all these features.
**Use OR search when:**
- You want to show more options
- Customers are still exploring
- You have a smaller product range
For example, if someone searches for "fender stratocaster maple neck," they'll see products that have any of these features.
**Tips for Choosing:**
- Use AND search for large product ranges where customers need to be specific
- Use OR search for smaller ranges or when you want to help customers discover new products
- Think about how your customers usually search when making this choice
1. **Minimum Search Length**: Set how many letters a search term needs to have
2. **What to Search**:
- **Basic Information**: Names, descriptions, etc.
- **Extra Details**: Add custom information to help with search
- Set importance levels and enable "smart splitting" for better results (e.g., "SKU-2024-SUMMER-SALE" becomes "SKU," "2024," "SUMMER," and "SALE")
3. **Words to Ignore**: Remove common words that don't help with product searches (like "the," "and," "or"). In Shopware you already get a pre-defined set here, so you don't need to set it up from stack.
### Testing Your Search
It's important to test your search to make sure it works well for your customers. Here's how:
1. **Using the Live Search Tool**
- Navigate to **Settings -> Search -> Live Search**
- Pick your store from the dropdown
- Try different searches to see the results (eg: category, product or manufacturer)
2. **Updating Search Information**
- After changing search settings, you need to update the search index
- Go to **Settings -> Caches & Indexes**
- Select the type of Update and index's you would want to update.
- Click **Update Indexes**. Wait for the update to finish.
> Note: Changes won't show up until you update the index
3. **Testing Tips**
- Use real search terms from your customers
- Check if important products show up where they should
- Make sure unwanted words are filtered out
- Test how multiple word searches work
- Check if custom information shows up in results
- Verify that results are ranked correctly
4. **Common Problems to Look For**
- Products are not showing up where they should
- Unrelated results appearing
- Slow search performance
- Missing custom information in results
- Results not ranked correctly
Regular testing helps keep your search working well and keeps customers happy.
### Shopware Intelligence Search Features
Shopware Intelligence includes buyer-facing search capabilities that make finding products easier through natural language and images. These features are available in the Shopware Rise plan or higher.
In the Shopware Administration, the search settings may still show the label **AI Copilot**. This refers to the same Shopware Intelligence capabilities.
**Search by context**
This feature lets customers search using everyday language instead of specific keywords.
**Setting It Up**
1. **Activation**: Enable natural language search in the Smart Search settings
2. **Describe Your Store**:
- Add keywords that describe what you sell
- This helps the system understand your products better and gets the right context
3. **Show Examples**:
- Configure up to three example search queries that demonstrate the power of natural language search
- These examples appear as suggestions to customers, helping them understand how to phrase their searches
- For a guitar shop, you might use examples like:
- "Show me all guitars that I can configure with a maple neck"
- "Find electric guitars under 1000€ with humbucker pickups"
- "I'm looking for a beginner acoustic guitar with a cutaway"
- These examples should show common customer questions and your store's special features
### Image Search
Customers can upload images to find similar products in your store.
**Features**
- Supports the common formats like PNG and JPEG
- Desktop: Upload via file selection or drag & drop
- Mobile: Upload existing photos or take new ones
- Displays top three matching products in a slider
- Images are not stored after search
**How It Looks in Your Store**
- Smart Search icon appears next to the search box
- Star icon opens the search helper
- Camera icon for image search
- Results show matching products with pictures and descriptions
## Making Your Store Easy to Find on Search Engines
Making your store easy to find on search engines like Google is important because it:
- **Gets More Visitors**: Good visibility brings more people to your store without paying for ads
- **Builds Trust**: People trust stores that appear at the top of search results
- **Finds the Right Customers**: Attracts people who are already looking for what you sell
- **Saves Money**: While it takes some work, it brings customers without ongoing costs
- **Beats Competitors**: Helps you stand out in crowded markets
- **Works on Phones**: Makes sure your store works well on mobile devices
It is important to set up "master" versions. This is crucial because:
- **Search Engine Impact**: Search engines penalize duplicate content, which can:
- Split ranking signals between similar pages
- Lower your overall search visibility
- Confuse search engines about which version to rank
- **User Experience**: Duplicate content can:
- Confuse customers with multiple versions of the same product
- Lead to inconsistent information
- Reduce trust in your store
- **Technical Benefits**: Having a single "master" version:
- Makes content maintenance easier
- Ensures information consistency
- Improves site performance
- Reduces the risk of outdated content
- **Best Practices**:
- Use canonical URLs to indicate the "master" version
- Implement proper redirects for moved content
- Create unique, valuable content for each page
- Use clear, descriptive URL structures
- Regularly audit your site for duplicate content
Shopware provides built-in tools to help manage duplicate content through its SEO settings, URL management, and content management system.
A canonical URL is the preferred version of a webpage when you have multiple URLs that show the same content. Think of it as telling search engines: "This is the main version of this page, please use this one for ranking."
For example, if you have these URLs showing the same product:
- `yourstore.com/guitars/fender-stratocaster`
- `yourstore.com/products/fender-stratocaster`
- `yourstore.com/fender-stratocaster`
You can set the first URL as the canonical version, telling search engines to treat it as the "master" version and ignore the others for ranking purposes.
## Setting Up "Outside Your Store" Search
### Setting Up Master Versions
A "master" version is the primary, canonical version of a page that search engines should index and rank. Here's how to set them up in Shopware:
1. **For Products**:
- Go to `Products` in your admin panel
- Select a product and open the **SEO** tab
- Set the **Canonical URL** to point to the main product page
- If you have variants, set the main product as the canonical version
2. **For Categories**:
- Navigate to `Categories` in your admin panel
- Select a category and open the **SEO** tab
- Set the **Canonical URL** to the main category page
- For subcategories, ensure they point to their own unique URLs
3. **For landing Pages**:
- Go to `Categories` -> `Landing pages`
- Select a page and open the **General** tab
- Set the **Canonical URL** to the SEO URL option
4. **Using Canonical Tags**:
- Shopware automatically adds canonical tags to your pages
- You can verify this by viewing the page source and looking for:
```html
```
5. **Setting Up Redirects**:
- Go to `Settings -> SEO`
- Create redirects for old URLs to point to the master versions
- Use 301 redirects for permanent moves
Remember: The master version should be the most complete, up-to-date version of your content, and all other versions should either redirect to it or have proper canonical tags pointing to it.
### Store-Wide Google Settings
Go to `Settings -> SEO` to set up how your store appears on search engines
- **What to Optimize**: Product pages, landing pages, and categories
- **Friendly Web Addresses**: Use clear, descriptive web addresses
- **Redirects**: Set up automatic redirects when you change web addresses
### Updating Google Information
When you make changes to your store's search settings, product information, or SEO configurations, these changes won't be immediately reflected in search results until the indexes are rebuilt. The index is like a database that stores all the searchable information in an optimized format.
So, it is important to update indexes after changes:
- Navigate to `Settings -> Caches & Indexes`
- Select **Update Indexes** and monitor progress via notifications
## Real-World Examples
### Store Search
**Example**: Making guitars with roasted maple necks easy to find
1. Make the "Neck Material" field more important in search
2. Test the changes using Live Search to make sure it works
### Search Engine Optimization
**Example**: Making guitar web addresses more descriptive
1. Change the web address to include the brand name (e.g., `/fender/stratocaster`)
2. Update the search index to apply the changes
By setting up your search features properly, you'll make it easier for customers to find what they're looking for in your store.
## Final Thoughts
Good search features help customers find products quickly, keep them on your site longer, and make shopping more enjoyable. Take time to set up and test your search features, and you'll see better results in your store's performance.
As you work on your store's search features, start by understanding how your customers search, then adjust your settings to match their needs while highlighting your most important products.
Let's continue with the dive into the tax section.