Guide for Elastic Search for Magento 2

Elastic Search for Magento 2 is an advanced tool to provide your store with optimized search performance and highly relevant search results.

• Display advanced autocomplete window
• Use spell corrections
• Add alternative product names by synonym results
• Configure full text content search
• Specify the search types for each product attribute
• Set promo rules to promote certain products
• Analyze customers’ activity via Search Analytics dashboard

Please, consider that there are three main entities, which constitutes the extension's work:

• Elasticsearch engine, which version should be equal to or greater than 6.x

You can check the version via curl request, for example:

• Elasticsearch-php, which is the Elasticsearch library;

• Amasty Elastic Search for Magento 2 extension, which is a configurable bridge between Elasticsearch engine and Magento platform.

Elasticsearch is provided in the various packages formats. The most commonly servers work on Debian-based or RPM-based systems.

Debian Package can be used to install Elasticsearch on any Debian-based system such as Debian and Ubuntu. You can install and run the Elasticsearch Debian package with the following:

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-6.3.0.deb
wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-6.3.0.deb.sha512
shasum -a 512 -c elasticsearch-6.3.0.deb.sha512 
sudo dpkg -i elasticsearch-6.3.0.deb
sudo update-rc.d elasticsearch defaults 95 10
sudo -i service elasticsearch start

It can be used to install Elasticsearch on any RPM-based system such as OpenSuSE, SLES, Centos, Red Hat, and Oracle Enterprise. The RPM for Elasticsearch v6.3.0 can be downloaded from the website and installed with the following commands:

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-6.3.0.rpm
wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-6.3.0.rpm.sha512
shasum -a 512 -c elasticsearch-6.3.0.rpm.sha512 
sudo rpm --install elasticsearch-6.3.0.rpm
sudo chkconfig --add elasticsearch
sudo -i service elasticsearch start

According to Elasticsearch tutorial for Magento 2, to manage a connection to Elastic Search you should go to Admin Panel → Stores → Configuration → Elastic Search → Connection

To enable the extension, in the Search Engine field, select the Amasty ElasticSearch. Alternatively, select MySQL, to disable the extension.

Elasticsearch Server Hostname - Specify a host name or IP address of a machine that runs Elasticsearch. (localhost or 127.0.0.1 by default).Get this value via Magento Cloud.

Elasticsearch Server Port - Set the Elasticsearch web server proxy port. In our example, the port is 9200.Get this value via Magento Cloud.

Elasticsearch Index Prefix - Specify a particular prefix for each store that you employ elastic search for.

Enable Elasticsearch HTTP Auth - Select 'Yes', if you have enabled authentication for your Elasticsearch server. Specify a user name and password in the pop-up fields.

Elasticsearch Server Timeout - here you can set the timeout. Enter the number of seconds before the system times out. The default value is 15.

Click Test Connection.

To configure Elastic Search functionality, go to Admin Panel → Stores → Configuration → Elastic Search → Catalog

Wildcard Type - Specify the type of the autocomplete suggestion - the part of a word which will be auto-completed. Three types are available to set:

Enable Wildcard After - Specify a number of symbols, after which an autocomplete suggestion will be applied.

Autocomplete suggestions after 3 symbols.

Enable Spell Correction - Specify a number of symbols, after which a spell correction will be applied.

Spell correction after 4 symbols.

Max Number of Search Results - Specify the maximum number of items in the search results.

Allow Special Characters - Enable a long-tail search. The search will include the hyphens, slashes and any symbols. The feature provides precise results when searching by SKU and MPN (manufacturer part numbers).

A product attribute in advanced query settings.

To add a product attribute to a search query configuration, please go to Admin Panel → Stores → Attributes → Product → Select a needed product attribute → click a tab Storefront Properties → Enable Use in Search

Specify the search type preferences for each product attribute:

Product Name attribute with Wildcard vs with Spell Correction

Think over how would you like the keywords in a search query to be combined for each product attribute.

How it works?

For instance, a customer searches your web store looking for a velvet jacket. As you specify a boolean type for a Product Name attribute:

1. AND logic will return only results that contain both velvet and jacket
2. OR logic will return results that contain either velvet or jacket (velvet shoes, denim jacket, etc)

Char Mapping - Mappings are used to convert a specified string of characters to a specified value. The format of mapping should be the following: {key} ⇒ {value}

Use Inbox Stopwords - enable this option to apply a default set of stopwords. Specify the necessary language.

Use Inbox Stemming - set to Yes and select the language to use stemmed words in search. This feature allows customers to search by the root form of the word. For example, if a customer types “bags”, he will get results with a “bag” single form as well.

This is how the feature works:

To keep index small by specifying the list of words to be ignored by the search engine, go to Admin Panel → System → Manage Stop Words.

On the grid, the list of all stop words is displayed. Easily Edit or Delete each stop word via Action column.

Click Add New Stop Word. Specify a Stop Word and Store View for the word to be applied.

In the stop word, there should be no whitespaces. To prevent the admin from entering the whitespace, the extension automatically validates the field and returns the warning if the whitespace was found.

With the extension, it is also possible to Import Stop Words.

To build a dictionary of synonyms, navigate to Admin Panel → System → Manage Synonyms.

Click Add New Synonym to input a group of words that will be regarded equally by a search logic. Separate them with commas.

Select a Store View.

You can switch to edit an entry by clicking Select in Action column on the synonyms' grid.

As an alternative, Import a CSV file with synonyms dictionary.

To manage boost rules, navigate to Admin Panel → System → Search Page Relevance Rules.

In the Action column (Select drop-down) choose Edit, to edit the existing rules.

Click Add New Rule to specify search and return conditions for a new promo rule.

Specify the name for a relevance rule - input Title. Note, that it is used mainly for admin.

Enabled - Enable or disable a rule with a toggle.

Website - Specify the particular stores, where you want the rule to be applied. Select from drop-down a needed store.

Activate - Set the dates (from-to), use a pop-up calendar or input directly with numbers.

Product Relevance - There are two modes available to work with relevance rules: Increase by and Decrease by:

• Select Increase by to boost a certain group of products in the search results;
• Select Decrease by to lower a product or a certain group of products in the search results;

Specify to what extend you want to boost or lower the products by setting a number from 1 to 100.

Conditions - Set the conditions, according to your marketing needs.

With the extension you can use 3 custom analyzers: Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

To activate this custom analyzer, please install Chinese Analysis Plugin first.

The Chinese analyzer is not customizable, you can still limit the max number of search results and set different match modes for the attributes.

Click here to install the Japanese (kuromoji) Analysis plugin.

Go to the Indexation Settings tab.

Use Inbox Stopwords - select Yes to apply the default list of words to be ignored by search engine.

Indexation Mode - this setting determines how engine handles compound and unknown words under indexation.

3 modes are available:

Normal - applies the segmentation without decomposition for compounds.

The output sample:

関西国際空港
アブラカダブラ

Search - choose this mode if you want to decompound long words and include the full compound token as a synonym.

The output sample:

関西, 関西国際空港, 国際, 空港
アブラカダブラ

Extended - select this one to output unigrams for unfamiliar words.

The output sample:

関西, 国際, 空港
ア, ブ, ラ, カ, ダ, ブ, ラ

Use Reading Form - choose the algorithm to replace words with their reading forms in either katakana or romaji set of characters.

Download Korean Analysis plugin here.

To customize the analyzer, go to the Indexation Settings tab.

Indexation Mode - this setting determines how engine handles compound and unknown words under indexation.

3 modes are available:

None - the extension do not apply decomposition for compound words.

The output sample:

가거도항
가곡역

Discard - this mode applies decomposition of compounds and discarding the original form.

The output sample:

가곡역 => 가곡, 역

Mixed - applies decomposition of compounds, but keeps the original form.

The output sample:

가곡역 => 가곡역, 가곡, 역

Use Reading Form - enable to rewrite words written in Hanja to their Hangul form.

Go to Admin Panel → Stores → Configuration → Advanced Search, to configure the advanced search features.

Expand the General tab.

Popup width (px) - indicates the width of the autocomplete popup window to make it fit in with other page elements. The recommended value for the horizontal view is 900. To get the vertical view, please enter 700 and lower.

Search Field Width - Choose the 'Default' option to keep the original size of the search field during the searching process or enable the 'Dynamic' (based on popup width).

Min Characters - specify the minimal number of characters that customers should type in to trigger the search process. By default, the number is three.

Enable Redirect from 404 to Search Results - If the option is enabled, when navigating to a broken URL or a non-existing page, a customer will be redirected to the store search results page instead of the '404 Not Found' page.

Custom URL Key for Default Search Results Page - enable to set SEO-friendly short URLs. URL will look 'search/yellow' instead of 'catalogsearch/results/q=yellow'.

Search Results Page URL Key - specify the URL alias for the search results' page.Please do not use 'catalogsearch' as URL Key value.

Enable Tabs on the Search Result Page - set to 'Yes' to enable the tabs that sort search results by Category, CMS, and Landing on the search results page.

See on the image below how the tabs will look like if other extensions compatible to the Elastic Search by Amasty are also installed. These two extra tabs on the image become available if the Amasty Landing Pages for Magento 2 and Amasty Improved Layered Navigation for Magento 2 are installed. Some other extensions will add other tabs.

Enable Indexation for Autocomplete popup - Set 'Yes' to speed up autocomplete popup performance. Please note, the reindex will take longer. This feature comes with the Amasty Elastic Search extension only.

Show Related Search Queries in Search Results - this option helps customers to get relevant results anyway if it's enabled. Choose one mode of the related search results display from the three available options:

• disable ('No, Disabled');
• enable permanently ('Yes, Show Always');
• enable only for a narrow case ('Yes, Show Only when search returns 0 results').

Show Related Search Queries Result Numbers - enable or disable showing related search queries result numbers.

A front-end sample of tabs:

Replace Empty Search Result Message with CMS Block - Choose 'No' from the dropdown if you want the zero search results page to remain empty. Or just pick up any CMS block from the list of your blocks to be displayed in case there are no search results matching the search term.

Include any available product attributes in search algorithm. For each attribute, you can set a priority (weight).

Click Add to create a new attribute. Set its Weight from 1 to 10 - select from a drop-down. Use the bin icon in the Action column to delete attributes in one click.

By default, the advanced search bar is located at the top right corner of the screen, near the shopping cart. But using widgets you can overcome Magento limitations and place the search bar anywhere you need all through the store, like on a sidebar, in the footer, on the CMS pages, and even in Customer Account.

There are two ways of how to configure some non-trivial location for the search bar:

1. configure the widget and specify 'Layout Updates';
2. configure the widget, configure a custom block with it, and then use this block (for example, on a CMS page).

For using the first way, please navigate to Content → Widgets and click on the 'Add Widget' button. Choose the relevant theme to be applied for this widget and the widget type 'Amasty Search Field'.

Specify widget title, needed store views, and the widget sort order.

First, please choose if you want to embed your widget on Categories (anchor or non-anchor), Products (depending on the product type), or Generic Pages. Depending on that choice you'll see the available containers for that type of a store page.

As per products and categories you can choose whether to display the widget on all store product/category pages in bulk or on the specific only.

As per Generic pages, there's the choice from three options, depending on which you'll see the unique set of the available containers:

• All Pages;
• Specified Page;
• Page Layouts.

When you're ready with all configurations, please refresh the page where you're expecting to see the widget and try flushing Magento Cache ('System → Cache Management → Flush Magento Cache') to see the result on the frontend immediately.

For the second way of locating the search bar anywhere else than the default please create the 'Amasty Search Field' widget first and then please go to 'Content → Blocks' to integrate that widget on some of the existing blocks or for creating new.

See the example of how this widget looks on the frontend (sidebar category menu):

Expand this tab to configure products display in a popup window.

Enabled - set to 'Yes' to enable search in products and display search results in the autocomplete popup.

Title - customize the title for the products block.

Position - specify products block position in the popup. This setting is ignored for the horizontal popup window.

Max Results - set the max number of displayed results.

Name Length - indicate the max number of characters of a product name that will be displayed in a popup window.

Short Description Length - set the number of characters for a product short description to be shown in a search window.

Show Reviews - enable reviews display in the autocomplete popup to help customers make the purchase decision much faster.

Enable 'Add to Cart' button - set to 'Yes' to show Add to cart button in the popup to let customers purchase necessary products right away.

Redirect to Product Page - enable this option to redirect in case there is only one search result available.

Show 'Out of Stock' Products Last - enable a feature to place the out-of-stock items last in the search results.

Out-of-stock items displayed last in the search results, a sample.

Apply Relevance Rules to Autocomplete Popup Results - Set 'Yes' to apply Relevance Rules to search autocomplete popup results.

Enabled - enable the display of the Popular Searches block.

Show on First Click - set the option to Yes to let customers see the Popular Searches block in the autocomplete popup once they click on the quick search field.

Title - specify the title of the block.

Position - set the position for the Popular searches block.

Max Results - set the maximal number of popular search results that will be displayed in the search autocomplete popup.

A sample

Enabled - Set this setting to 'Yes' to allow the logged-in customers to see their latest search queries in the autocomplete popup.

Show on First Click - Set this option to 'Yes' to enable showing the 'Browsing History' block at the first user's click in a popup.

Title - In this field, you can specify any custom title for the 'Browsing History' block.

Position - In this field, you can specify the position (display order) of the 'Browsing History' block within the search autocomplete popup.

Max Results - Here you can set the maximal number of results from the browsing history that will be visible in the popup. Or you can just use the system value which is 4 (four).

Enabled - select Yes to display the Recent Searches block.

Show on First Click - set the option to Yes to let customers see the Recent Searches block in the autocomplete popup once they click on the quick search field.

Specify the Title, Position and Max Results to be displayed.

Display Recent Searches in a pop-up

Enabled - set to Yes to enable search by blog pages and to display a blog section in the search window popup to help store visitors find the required content throughout your corporate blog.

Title - input a name for the section in the search popup, where the blog results will be displayed.

Also specify the Position, Max Results.

Set Content Heading Length and Content Length to be displayed to make your search autocomplete window look informative and clear.

Enable to display a Brand section in the search window popup.

Specify the Title, Position, Max Results, Content Heading Length and Content Length for Brands block.

A brand sample section in the search pop-up:

Enable the option to let the extension search among category attributes and display the results in the autocomplete popup.

Specify Categories block Title, Position and the max number of displayed Results.

Name Length - indicate the number of characters of a category title that will be displayed in a popup window.

Description Length - set the number of characters for a product short description to be shown.

Display Full Category Path - set to Yes to show full path to the results displayed in the popup.

When mouse hover over a category link, the directory levels are displayed.

Enable search on CMS pages to provide customers with detailed search results.

Specify the Title, Position and the Max Results.

Also, set the maximal number of characters for Content Heading and Content that will be shown.

Enabled - Set 'Yes' to enable the 'Recently Viewed' widget in the autocomplete popup.

Title - In this field, you can specify a custom title for the widget.

Max Results - Here you can specify the max number of products to be displayed in the slider.

Enabled - Set 'Yes' to enable the 'Bestsellers' widget in the autocomplete popup.

Title - In this field, you can specify a custom title for the widget.

Position - If the widget 'Recently Viewed' is enabled, you can specify in which order these two widgets will be displayed (which one first).

Max Results - Here you can specify the max number of products to be displayed in the slider.

Enable search landing pages in the popup, specify the Title, Position and the Max Results. Set the maximal number of characters for Content Heading and Content that will be shown is the search popup.

Enable search FAQ pages in the popup, specify the Title, Position and the Max Results. Set the maximal number of characters for Content Heading and Content that will be shown in the search popup.

Enable this option to customize popup design.

Set colors for a Border, Hover, Highlight, Background, Text and Hover Text using convenient color picker tool.

See custom layout example:

The Advanced Search extension allows to maximize profits by analyzing visitors' searching activity and the data gained.

To see the Search Analytics dashboards, go to Admin Panel → Reports → Search Analytics.

Here you can see the next values: total searches, unique searches, the number of users and users’ engagement. The Engagement statistics includes the page jumps to Brands, Categories, Blog, CMS & Landing pages.

Easily check customers’ demand in the Most Wanted Search Terms and Recent Activity blocks. The extension automatically records the activity of users on the front end and converts it into reports on the back end.

To see more details on Most Wanted Search Terms, go to Admin Panel → Reports → Most Wanted.

To see more details on customers' Recent Activities, go to Admin Panel → Reports → Recent Activity.

This extension lets store admins construct a seamless search flow with the related search terms. It is highly useful for customers, as it helps to navigate the store with relevant search suggestions.

Start by overseeing all search terms, that users created in the store by organically entering search requests in the autocomplete search window. To access it, please go to the Admin Panel → Reports → Search Terms.

Here, you can see how each search word performs. You can also export it in the CSV or Excel XML formats just in one click. Also, easily add new search terms or edit them.

Press on the required search term to modify it.

Here, the admin can adjust the general information and assign related terms.

Search Query - enter the search request a user needs to type into the search field.

Store - assign the store view for a specific keyword.

Number of Results - it specifies, how many search results will be returned.

Number of Uses - this number signifies how many times visitors have requested this specific search query.

Redirect URL - enter the URL you want to redirect users to when clicking on search results.

Display in Suggested Terms - set to Yes to show this search word in the Related Terms list for other search requests.

In the Related Terms table you'll get a list of all search terms that are enabled for display in suggested terms. Mark the necessary ones that match your goal by ticking the checkmark. This way, it will be much easier for a customer to navigate your store even if they've misspelled the search requests. Also, it's a great opportunity for a store owner to promote relevant searches that might be interesting for a customer and therefore motivate them to purchase in your store.

The new sorting options and widgets are added to standard Magento ones on the front end and enable your customers to find the right products faster. Also Ratings and reviews of other people can be really helpful for your customers.

As well as with the Magento default reviews, you can use a 'Reviews Count' feature with popular Yotpo Reviews extension. Easily collect customer reviews and then display them on site pages to help buyers with purchase decisions. Moreover, analyzing customers' feedback data you can continually optimize your web store to provide better customer experience and increase your store conversion.

Boost your most popular products to sell even better with 'Featured Products' block.

This is a frontend example of a page with an alphabetical list of all brands. Each name leads to the appropriate brand page.

Below you'll see a brand page with a short SEO-friendly URL and custom content.

Display Tooltip - Multi-select the directories, where you would like to display a tooltip with a brand info.

Possible variants to display:

• all-brands page
• product pages
• catalog pages (listing)

Provide customers with the ability to choose the wishlist where to save the product, right from the autocomplete popup.

To configure the indexing of your catalog, go to System → Tools → Index Management

Magento 2 Elastic Search extension is preintegrated with Cron Tasks List to provide store owners with an opportunity to track and manage all cron tasks running in the website background.

To view all scheduled and executed cron tasks, go to System → Tools → Cron Schedule List

Run all cron tasks and generate their schedule by clicking the ‘Run Cron’ button. Also you can delete separate tasks in bulk, apply filtering and sorting options when it is needed.

Provide shoppers with an outstanding cross-device experience by implementing a ready-made PWA solution to your store. Allow customers to smoothly search and quickly find what they need using the Elastic Search extension in a combination with the PWA add-on.

If the add-on is installed, the autocomplete popup of the Elastic Search extension will look on Venia the following way: