Commerce Search v3 overview
Commerce Search v3 in Optimizely Configured Commerce uses advanced search technologies designed for ecommerce platforms and specifically for the complexities of B2B commerce to improve product discovery, grow conversions, and ease the B2B purchase experience. This version integrates with your existing ecommerce systems, improves user experience, and increases sales with features that adapt to your changing needs. You can provide fast and relevant search results, which can improve conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
While previous Commerce Search versions had powerful indexing and search capabilities, Commerce Search v3 is optimized for product discovery by incorporating advanced AI and machine learning to understand user intent, optimize product rankings, and deliver highly relevant results from broad or vague queries. For information on how these AI capabilities are structured and how to optimize your search performance, see Understand Vertex AI Search tiers.
This version also provides a more intuitive configuration and management experience, reducing the complexity of configuring and maintaining search solutions. Additionally, Commerce Search v3 offers seamless integration with existing Optimizely products, creating a cohesive and efficient ecommerce environment.
Commerce Search v3 has the following benefits:
- Enhanced search accuracy – Deliver precise search results quickly, improving the likelihood of conversion.
- Semantic and conversational search – Goes beyond keyword matching by understanding the meaning behind queries, enabling more natural interactions and better product discovery.
- Dynamic filtering and faceting – Automatically surfaces the most relevant filters based on the product context, like showing "lens color" when searching for sunglasses.
- Seamless integration – Incorporate existing business systems and Optimizely products for a streamlined ecommerce operation.
- User-friendly management – Benefit from a simplified configuration and management process, reducing the technical overhead often required with search solutions.
- Improved customer experience – Provide a more satisfying shopping experience for your customers.
- Fully managed infrastructure – No need to train models or manage scaling, the backend is fully managed so businesses can focus on crafting the user experience.
- Scalability – Handle increasing volumes of data and search queries as your business grows.
Prerequisites
Note
Provisioning of Commerce Search v3 is a multi-day, multi-step process and is not completable within one day due to the many prerequisites and configuration steps, both for Optimizely and the customer/partner. We do our best to expedite this process, but if you have a specific deadline Optimizely recommends submitting the support request (with all prerequisites satisfied) at least 2-4 weeks in advance of the required date.
- Ensure you have the June 2025 release or later for short-term support.
- Ensure you use Opti ID. See Get started with Opti ID.
- Note all active Spire websites and their active languages. Classic sites are not supported.
- Submit a request for manual provisioning of the required Optimizely products and resources.
Implement Commerce Search v3
Follow these steps to implement Commerce Search v3:
- Review custom extensionsReview custom extensions.
Commerce Search v3 is fully functional when you complete these steps. If you need to customize your search settings further after testing the new capabilities, you can add additional rules and controls in the Admin Console under Marketing > Commerce Search v3. See Configure Commerce Search v3 for information.
Limitations
Commerce Search v3 has limitations if you upgrade from Commerce Search v1 or v2. See Limitations of Commerce Search v3 for information.
Website-level search providers
When Commerce Search v3 is the Search Indexer, you can run a different Search Provider on individual websites for example, serving some websites through Commerce Search v3 (Retail Search) and others through Commerce Search v2 (Elasticsearch v7). See Enable website-level search providersEnable website-level search providers