Tuning AjaxSearch for a Product Catalog in Evolution CMS

This donor topic came from a storefront search implementation that technically worked, but returned poor results because containers appeared in search and partial phrase matching was too weak.

Common Catalog Search Problems

• Container documents appear together with actual sellable products.
• Search works only for full exact words.
• Result templates mix product and structural content without distinction.

Better Search Strategy

• Restrict search depth and parent scope to the catalog branches that contain real products.
• Exclude containers or filter them in the result layer.
• Use dedicated product result templates with key TVs such as price.
• Treat partial and phrase matching as a design choice, not a default assumption.

Search quality is rarely fixed by one parameter alone. In most Evolution CMS catalogs, the best results come from better content scoping plus cleaner result templates.