Why Is a Product Not Showing Up in Search?
Normally, when a product does not appear in the search, it may be due to one of these reasons:
- It is not indexed in the feed. The product may not be included in the feed because it was added after the last indexing, so it won't appear in the search results. If you integrated Doofinder in your site with one of the official plugins, they should automatically update search indices for you when there's a change in your catalog.
- Product is out of stock. Check if your Search Engine is configured to exclude out of stock products from search results, read our "Out of stock items" article for more information. If your Search Engine is not configured to exclude out of stock products (Configuration > Indices > Configuration > Exclude out of stock products); check if the product is excluded from search (Search > under Promotional Tools > Excluded Results); and, check if the product is affected by some kind of visibility rule in your site like hidden categories, or the like. Lastly, if you are using a data feed to index products, check if the product appears in the feed.
- A query that should display the product is matching a custom result. Use the search feature Results Preview to verify if that's the case. If so, you can check the configuration of that custom result at Search > under Promotional Tools > Custom Results. Learn more about Custom Results here.
- There was a temporary problem with your site or the indexing service. In this case, a quick and easy solution is going to your site's admin and saving again the product so it triggers the required updates. In case you see an error message in the indexing log, try to fix the problem if it happens to be on your side. You will find an article explaining the most common errors here. If you need assistance, contact us via our contact form and we'll help you.
- The data feed was not entirely read. If the feed comes in CSV format, and the transmission was interrupted, the feed may have partially indexed. This does not happen, for instance, with XML feeds, which have more strict syntax requirements.
Remember, if your catalog is okay, just re-index the data feed manually in your Doofinder Admin Panel.
Cloudflare and Other CDN Caches
If you are using Cloudflare or other kind of caching system to reduce traffic to your website:
- Offload the feed urls to a subdomain that is not cached
- Ensure nothing times out, giving enough execution time to your web server (NGINX, Apache...) (will depend on the amount of products in the catalog). Keep in mind that cloud load balancers might also time out.
- Whitelist Doofinder IPs.
Index Products "Manually"
If you have coding knowledge you can manually index/update products programmatically with our Management API.
Notice you don't need that if you are using any of our plugins in your ecommerce because they usually allow automatic updates when you save your products in your site. The feature may appear in the plugin as update on save, atomic updates, or the like.
Remember you can always reindex your entire product catalog manually but without any coding. Just go to your Search Engine's Indices settings page in the Admin Panel > Configuration > Indices and press the "Process Now" button.
Products Not Updating As Expected
If your products are not showing up as expected after indexing, here are some steps to check:
- Check the Indexing Logs: Go to your Doofinder Admin Panel and navigate to Configuration > Indices. Look for any error messages in the indexing logs that might indicate what went wrong.
- Reindex Manually: If everything seems fine in the logs, try reindexing your products manually. Go to Configuration > Indices and click the “Process Now” button to trigger a reindex.
- Verify Data Feed: Ensure that your data feed is correctly set up and that it includes all the necessary product information. If you’re using a static data feed, make sure you have uploaded the most recent file.
- Check for Out of Stock products: If your Search Engine is configured to exclude out of stock products, ensure that the products you are trying to update are in stock. You can manage this setting in Configuration > Indices > Configuration.
- Automatic Indexing: If you have automatic indexing enabled, check if it has been disabled due to repeated failures. You can re-enable it from the same Indices page.
If you continue to experience issues, contact us through our contact form for further assistance.