Magento Search not Working?
>> How to fix it <<

Is your search not working on your Magento eCommerce?

This is a very common problem within the Magento Platform, however, it has several solutions and most of them are fast and easy to implement. In this post we’ll explain what you can do to fix it and improve your search in Magento 1 & 2.

Take a look at the solutions we propose in this post and make your magento search work properly.

The first and fastest solution to implement we propose is Doofinder on Site Search Engine.

How could your search box be improved? By default, Doofinder understands misspellings, suggests complementary and best selling products, let your customers filter by color, size, price, popularity… and much more. Have it installed in under 5 min. Check how your search box could work below.

Now, let´s start with the most common search issues in Magento 1

1. Cache Management

Most of the times Magento search does not work due to caching issues.

To solve this problem, once you are logged in to your Magento Admin, go to: System → Cache Management and click on → “Flush Magento Cache”

Flush Magento cache is a procedure referred to clearing stale data in Magento cache storage that can affect to your search results.

2. Re-Index Data

Do you have Magento properly indexed?

This can be a huge issue that is causing an error in search.
Our suggested solution is to reindex all the data in Magento.

It´s simple; Once you are in your Magento Admin go to: System →Index Managment → click on the text in the left “select all” → Go to the right in the drop down select “Reindex Data” → And click “submit”

Magento indexes all the data related with the product attributes. This can be the product, categories, prizes…and so on with the objective of improving your storefront.

3. Magento Base Theme

Are you using a Magento Custom Theme?

If the answer is “Yes” , restore to Base Magento Theme and check if the search is working.

When you make this kind of change if the search is working with the Base Magento Theme you will be able to see the issue is with the theme’s custom coding. You will then have to compare the catalogsearch.xml file:

app/design/frontend/base/default/layout/catalogsearch.xml

Compare against:

app/design/frontend/default/your_theme/layout/catalogsearch.xml

Are you missing any code? This files have to be identical.

4. Product Attributes

Maybe you haven’t configured the product attributes properly?
Check the products attributes. To manage it go to: Catalog → Attributes → Manage attributes

Once you are in this page, search for “name” in the column attribute code and fill it like this:

Attribute label → Name
Required → Yes
System → Yes
Visible → No
Scope → Global (Important to set it like this)
Searchable → Yes
Use in Layered Navigation → No
Comparable → Yes

Now, do the same search for “sku” in the column attribute code and do it like below:

Attribute label → Sku
Required → Yes
System → Yes
Visible → No
Scope → Global (Important to set it like this)
Searchable → Yes
Use in Layered Navigation → No
Comparable → Yes

5. “Configuration of search”

Did you configure the catalog search?

To change it, go to: System → Configuration , in the menu on the left, click on “catalog” and go to “Catalog search” tab and configure it like this:

This is the recommended configuration for Magento 1 internal search.

In Magento 2, you can try the same solutions we shared for M1 and we have also added a couple more useful tips.

Before explaining the principal issues you can find in Magento 2, you have to know there are some changes to the search in M2.

In relation with Magento 2 Enterprise Edition:

– This Edition uses ElasticSearch by default instead of Solr.
– At the same time, you can change it. You can choose between Elastic, Solr or MySQL. You can change this in the back-end: Stores → configuration→ catalog→ catalog search

Related with other editions:
– Magento 2 community Edition you can only search with MySQL
– Magento 2 doesn’t provides the “fulltext”, “like” or “combine” options for matching queries

1. Configure the search in Magento 2

The configuration is largely the same just like in the older versions of Magento. The relevant change, is the one we mentioned before, there isn’t the option for “fulltext”, “like” and “combine” for matching queries.
You can check in the image below the search options in Magento 2 back-end. Go to: stores → configuration → catalog → catalog search.

2. Recognize the synonyms

The functionality of synonyms is key for your in internal search success.

You could be losing sales because of this. To add synonyms go to:
In the Magento 2 admin, go to: Marketing → SEO & Search → Search Synonyms.

*NOTE*: If it’s the first time you use it, this will appear empty like in the image.

To add synonyms, first click on “New Synonym Group”, then set the scope (where the synonyms will apply) and enter the synonyms in the group separated by commas.

3. Reindex data Magento 2

Go to System-> Index management -> Select all-> Actions-> Update on save

Like we mention in Magento 1 the objective of the reindexing is to improve your storefront.

4. Flush cache

To solve the caching issues go to System-> Cache management-> Flush magento cache

To solve the caching issues go to System-> Cache management-> Flush magento cache