Mapping "Failed Search Words" to Specific Products (GC)
If you determine that users are doing searches on your website for words which are not returning any products, and you do have related products in your system, but your product data uses different words... What do you do so that these users can find your products?
Keywords Field
The GC system has a "Keywords" field on the product record where you load any number of hidden keywords for search matching. These hidden keywords are not displayed anywhere on the product detail page, but they are used when a user does a search on the website.
Process
It's a good practice to periodically (e.g. monthly) generate a "
failed searches" report for the previous month, and for all or most of the failed searches, to add those failed words or phrases into the products that would be a good match for what the user was searching for. Of course, if there are 10 products that would be a good match, then add those failed words or phrases into the Keywords field of those 10 SKUs.
You might not want to do this for ALL failed search words, but you should probably do this for any failed search words that occur multiple times in a given month, or that occur more than _X_ times per month.
Updating Product Data
To update product data, edit the associated product and populate its Keywords field with the failed search words or phrases. You can enter multiple such words or alternate spellings or phrases, just separate each word or phrase with a comma.
For best results, this "fix" to failed searches needs to be a periodic / on going practice to keep your website responding to the current and on going needs of your users.