What Search & Discovery is
Search & Discovery is a free app built by Shopify that brings together the settings for filters, search and product recommendations. It does not replace the native search: it configures it. Results still come from Shopify's search engine, but you decide which filters appear, which synonyms apply and which products get priority.
For filters to show up in the store, the theme has to support Online Store 2.0 filtering. Current Theme Store themes do. If your theme is old or heavily modified, first check that the collection and search templates read the native filters.
Filters: what you can filter by
In the app you choose the filters and their order. You can use standard product data and also metafields, which lets you filter by almost any attribute in your catalog as long as the data is well structured.
- Availability and price
- Product type, vendor and tags
- Variant options, such as size or color
- Product and variant metafields: material, season, compatibility
- Product category from Shopify's Standard Product Taxonomy
Grouping values and ordering filters
One of the most common problems is scattered values: Blue, navy blue, Navy and Dark blue as four separate options in the color filter. Search & Discovery lets you group values under one display name, so the customer sees a single Blue and the store includes every matching variant.
You can also sort values, change the label the customer sees and, for some filter types, choose whether it shows as a list or as color swatches. Spend time on this: a filter with twenty misspelled values scares people off more than it helps.
Filter quality depends on data quality. If every product has its material written a different way, no app will fix it. That is why you should normalize metafields with fixed lists of values or metaobject references before building the filters.
Search: synonyms and boosts
On the search side, the app lets you create synonym groups so that someone searching for zapatillas also finds products your catalog calls deportivas or sneakers. This is especially useful in Spain, where the same product has different names depending on the region or on whether the customer uses the English term.
Product boosts push certain products to the top when someone searches for a specific term: your best seller, the new season item or the product with the most stock. Use them with judgment, because if you force less relevant products, search loses its usefulness.
Get your data ready before configuring
Almost every filter problem we see has the same root cause: a catalog that grew without a data model. Some products have the color in the title, others in a tag and others only in the photo. Before you open the app, audit the catalog and decide where each piece of data will live.
A good practice is to give every filterable attribute its own metafield with a fixed type: a list of allowed values, a number with its unit or a metaobject reference. That way nobody can type Algodon without the accent on one product and Algodón on another. Shopify's Standard Product Taxonomy also helps, because it assigns common attributes by category that can then be used as filters.
- Decide which filters each type of collection needs
- Create a metafield with a fixed type for each attribute
- Fill in the data in bulk with an export or an import app
- Set up the filters and group any leftover values
- Check large and small collections on mobile before publishing
Product recommendations
Shopify generates automatic related product recommendations on the product page. With Search & Discovery you can add to them by hand: choose specific related products and, above all, complementary products, the ones that make sense to buy alongside the one being viewed.
For those recommendations to appear, the theme needs a section that displays them. Many themes include related products out of the box; complementary products usually need a dedicated block that some themes include and others do not.
Analyze what your customers search for
The app includes search reports: top search terms, terms with no results and terms with few clicks. This report is gold. Searches with no results tell you which products customers expect to find and cannot, which synonyms are missing or what you are naming in a way nobody uses.
Review this data often and turn every finding into an action: a new synonym, a product name change, a missing metafield or even a new collection.
Where it falls short
Search & Discovery covers most stores well. It falls short in very large catalogs with advanced search needs: finer typo tolerance, search by SKU or spare part number, per-customer personalization or complex rule-based merchandising. In those cases there are specialized search apps that replace the native engine.
Before installing one, check whether the real problem is the data. In many projects search improves far more by cleaning up product types, tags and metafields than by switching tools.
If you do switch engines in the end, keep in mind that these apps usually load their own script on the storefront. Measure the impact on speed before and after installing it.
Frequently asked questions
Is Search & Discovery a paid app?
No. It is a free app published by Shopify and available in the App Store on every plan.
Why are filters not showing in my store?
Most often the theme does not support Online Store 2.0 filtering or the collection section has filters turned off. Also check the filtering limits Shopify lists for very large collections.
Can I filter by data that is not in Shopify?
First you need to bring that data into Shopify, usually as a product or variant metafield. From there you can create the filter in the app.
Do filters affect SEO?
Filtered URLs use parameters and should not compete with your collections. If you want to rank for a specific combination, such as women's running shoes, create a dedicated collection with its own copy instead of relying on a filter.