When Suggest+ returns product suggestions, it does not always use the exact user input. Instead, it typically applies the Top Keyword strategy (default), which differs from how traditional search (Instant Search) behaves. Understanding this difference is key to explaining why product suggestions may not always match the raw query.

Suggest+ can use two strategies to retrieve product suggestions:

1. Top Keyword (default)

2. Instant Search

Top Keyword Strategy

With this approach, Suggest+:

1. Looks at the keyword suggestions for what the user typed.

2. Picks the top (most relevant or popular) keyword.

3. Uses that keyword to perform a search in FAS.

4. Fetches the top product results returned for the search. (The number of products returned depends on your specific use case.)

Important: Product suggestions are based on the most relevant full keyword not the exact user input. This method shows more relevant products earlier, aligns suggestions with what customers most often mean, and reduces system load.

Example

1. The shopper types “run”.

2. Suggest+ keyword suggestions might be: “running shoes” (most popular) or “running shorts” (less popular)

3. Suggest+ selects “running shoes” as it is the most popular keyword.

4. Suggest+ performs a search using “running shoes”.

5. Suggest+ returns the top search results for “running shoes”.
   → The return products are based on “running shoes” even though the user only typed “run”.

Note: If no products are found using the top keyword, Suggest+ automatically falls back to the user’s original input and uses Instant Search to return product suggestions.

Matching most popular keyword

Before Suggest+ can show product suggestions, it first needs to decide which keyword best represents what the shopper is looking for.

1. As soon as the shopper types a query, Suggest+ searches through its list of known keywords.

2. Suggest+ tries multiple matching strategies. It checks several possibilities, from most to least certain:

   • Exact match: Is the typed query a complete keyword already?

   • Phrase match: Does a keyword start exactly with what was typed?

   • Starts-with match: Do any words within a keyword start with this input?

   • Fuzzy match: Could this be a typo or misspelling?

3. Each match is given a confidence score, depending on how closely it matches the input.

4. From all possible matches, Suggest+ chooses the keyword that:

   • Has the highest confidence score.

   • Cleanly completes what the user typed without adding unrelated words.

Instant Search Strategy

With this approach, Suggest+ skips the keyword step and directly uses the typed user query to perform a search and return the top results. (The number of products returned depends on your specific use case.)

Important: This method may return broad results. The returned results in Suggest+ are identical to the results returned in FHR Search for the typed query.

Example

1. The shopper types “run”.

2. Suggest+ performs a search using “run”.

3. Suggest+ returns the top search results for “run”.

Note: If no products are found using Instant Search, Suggest+ uses the Top Keyword strategy as fallback.

Takeaway

If product suggestions in Suggest+ sometimes look more “complete” than what the user typed, that’s expected. Suggest+ is designed to guide users toward the most relevant results, not just mirror their input. This helps shoppers find products faster even if the typed query is incomplete.