Indexing

The Live Search indexing process reads through the catalog for product attributes and builds an index so that products can be searched, filtered and presented rapidly.

Product attribute properties (metadata) determine:

• How an attribute can be used in the catalog
• Its appearance and behavior in the store
• The data that is included in data transfer operations

The scope of attribute metadata is website/store/store view.

The Live Search API allows a client to sort by any product attribute that has the storefront property Use in Search set to Yes in the Adobe Commerce Admin. When enabled, Search Weight and Visible in Advanced Search can be set for the attribute.

Live Search does not index deleted products or those set to Not Visible Individually.

Indexing pipeline

The client calls the search service from the storefront to retrieve (filterable, sortable) index metadata. Only searchable product attributes with the Use in Layered Navigation property set to Filterable (with results) and Use for Sorting in Product Listing set to Yes can be called by the search service.
To construct a dynamic query, the search service needs to know which attributes are searchable and their weight. Live Search honors Adobe Commerce search weights (1-10, where 10 is the highest priority). The list of data that is synced and shared with the catalog service can be found in the schema, which is defined in:

vendor/magento/module-catalog-data-exporter/etc/et_schema.xml

1. Check merchant for Live Search entitlement.
2. Get store views with changes to attribute metadata.
3. Store indexing attributes.
4. Reindex search index.

Full index

When Live Search is configured and synchronized during onboarding, it can take up to 30 minutes to build the initial index. Large catalogs can take longer to index. The process begins after cron submits the feed and finishes running.

The following events trigger a full sync and index build:

• Onboarding catalog data sync
• Changes to attribute metadata

For example, changing the Use in Search property of the color attribute from No to Yes changes the attribute metadata to searchable=true, and triggers a full sync and reindex. The following attribute metadata trigger a full sync and reindex when changed:

• filterableInSearch
• searchable
• sortable
• visibleInSearch

Streaming product updates

After the initial index is built during onboarding, the following incremental product updates are continuously synced and reindexed:

• New products added to the catalog
• Changes to product attribute values

For example, adding a new swatch value to the color attribute is handled as a streaming product update.
Streaming update workflow:

1. Updated products are synced from the Adobe Commerce instance to the catalog service.
2. The indexing service continuously looks for product updates from the catalog service. Updated products are indexed as they arrive in the catalog service.
3. It can take up to 15 minutes for a product update to become available in Live Search.

Client search

The Live Search API allows a client to sort by any sortable product attribute by setting the storefront property, Used for sorting in product listings to Yes. Depending on the theme, this setting causes the attribute to be included as an option in the Sort by pagination control on catalog pages. Up to 200 product attributes can be indexed by Live Search, with storefront properties that are searchable and filterable.
The index metadata is stored in the indexing pipeline and is accessible by the search service.

Sortable attribute workflow

1. Client calls Search Service.
2. Search Service calls Search Admin Service.
3. Search Service calls Indexing Pipeline.

Indexed for all products

The order of the fields in this list reflects the typical order of columns in exported product data.

• environment_id
• website_code
• store_code
• store_view_code
• product_id
• sku
• name
• type
• displayable
• deleted
• url
• currency
• meta_description
• meta_keyword
• meta_title
• description
• short_description
• weight
• image
• small_image
• thumbnail_image
• prices
• in_stock
• low_stock

The following field is indexed for all configurable products:

• childrenSkus