This article explains how to validate your Suggest+ integration and ensure search suggestions meet your business and shopper expectations.

Learn more: For more information on Suggest+ see Introducing Suggest+.

When to test Suggest+

You should test your Suggest+ integration after:

• Initial implementation
• Configuration changes in the Merchandising Studio (see also How to create a business rule for Product Suggest)
• Major catalogue, brand, or category updates

How to test Suggest+

1. Use the production query endpoint.

Test Suggest+ using your API testing tool against your test environment. 

Important: Ensure product and analytics data on the test system are representative of the data on your live system.

2. Select representative search terms.

To get meaningful results, base your testing on actual shopper behaviour from your Insights search reports.

We recommend testing:

• Top 10–15 high-frequency search terms, selected from reporting
• A mix of one-word and two-word queries
• Terms that represent different shopper intents and edge cases

Moreover, use the following patterns as a checklist when selecting test queries:

• Category names, e.g.: dresses, shirts
• Brand names, e.g.: nike, levi's
• Category + brand, e.g.: nike shoes
• Category + feature (such as colour or attribute), e.g.: red dress, black boots
• Misspelled categories, e.g.: dresees, shrits

These patterns help confirm that Suggest+ performs well across typical and imperfect shopper inputs.

4. Review the suggestions.

For each test query, review the suggestions returned and check whether they:

• Align with your merchandising and business expectations
• Reflect relevant categories, brands, and products
• Handle misspellings appropriately
• Provide helpful guidance for ambiguous searches

Learn more: For more details on how product suggestions are retrieved see Top Keywords vs Instant Search for Product Suggest.