How to Set Up Smart Search Global Settings in Rebuy
The Smart Search feature in Rebuy allows you to customize how your customers search for products on your store.
With these global settings, you can control which Smart Search experiences are active on your storefront, refine search results by managing visibility for out-of-stock products, excluding unwanted results, and adjusting the influence of search attributes. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to configure these settings to optimize your store's product search.
Enable or Disable Smart Search
What It Does:
The Search Enabled section in Smart Search Global Settings allows you to control which Smart Search experiences are active on your storefront. You can independently enable or disable Quick View and Results Page — the two core surfaces where Smart Search appears for your customers.
In Global Settings, the Search Enabled card displays two independent toggles — one for Quick View and one for Results Page. A status tag to the right of the Search Enabled header reflects the combined state of both toggles at a glance.
Both toggles are set to OFF by default. To display Smart Search on your storefront, you'll also need to complete the required Shopify installation steps. See the Smart Search Installation Guide for details.
Toggle Reference:
Toggle | What It Controls |
Quick View | Enables the Smart Search quick view experience, which surfaces search results inline as customers type in the search bar — without navigating away from the current page. |
Results Page | Enables the Smart Search full results page experience, which displays a dedicated search results page when a customer submits a search query. |
How to Use It:
Step 1: Go to the Smart Search Global Settings page in your Rebuy admin.
Step 2: Locate the Search Enabled section.
Step 3: Toggle Quick View, Results Page, or both on or off depending on which experiences you want active on your storefront.
Step 4: Confirm any changes using the confirmation modal that appears when enabling or disabling a toggle.
Step 5: Click Save to apply your changes.
Status Tag Behavior:
The Search Enabled header displays a dynamic status tag based on the combined state of both toggles. The Live tag appears whenever at least one toggle is enabled. The Not Live tag only appears when both toggles are off.
Quick View | Results Page | Status Tag |
OFF | OFF | 🔘 Not Live |
ON | OFF | 🟢 Live |
OFF | ON | 🟢 Live |
ON | ON | 🟢 Live |
Important things to know:
Both toggles are OFF by default when Smart Search is first set up — you must manually enable the experiences you want active.
Enabling either toggle does not replace the required Shopify-side installation steps. Smart Search will not display on your storefront until those steps are completed. See the Smart Search Installation Guide for more information.
Quick View and Results Page each have their own dedicated editors with additional toggle controls at the individual level. The Global Settings toggles act as the master on/off switch for each surface across your entire storefront. Changes made from either the editor or Global Settings are reflected in both places.
Confirmation modals appear when enabling or disabling each toggle to guide you through the change.
Why use separate toggles? Having independent controls for each search surface gives you greater flexibility over your customer experience. You may want to run Quick View without a full Results Page, or activate the Results Page while keeping Quick View off.
Sync Manager
The Sync Manager is a section in Smart Search Global Settings that gives you visibility and manual control over how Shopify data syncs with Rebuy Smart Search.
Screenshot example above: Sync Manager flyout showing Content Sync and Product Sync cards
What It Does
The Sync Manager includes two sync types available to all merchants: Content Sync and Product Sync. Content Sync runs automatically every day at 6:00 AM EDT. Use a manual trigger when you need content changes reflected in search before the next scheduled run. Product Sync updates in real-time. Use it only if products are missing or outdated in search results.
Sync Type | What It Does | Schedule |
Content Sync | Syncs Shopify content (pages, blogs, articles, etc.) with Smart Search. Use this when you've updated content in Shopify and need it reflected in search results immediately. | Daily at 6:00 AM EDT |
Product Sync | Re-indexes all products from Shopify. Use this only if products are missing or outdated in search results. | Real-time |
How to Use It
Step 1: Go to the Smart Search Global Settings page in your Rebuy admin.
Step 2: Locate the Sync Manager card.
Step 3: Click the Edit (⚙ gear icon) button to open the Sync Manager flyout panel.
Step 4: Review the last synced timestamp for each sync type.
Step 5: Click Run on the relevant sync card to trigger a manual sync.
Important things to know:
Content Sync runs automatically on a daily schedule at 6:00 AM EDT. You only need to trigger a manual Content Sync when you need changes reflected in search before the next scheduled run.
Product Sync updates in real-time. Use it only if products are missing or outdated in search results.
After a Product Sync completes, the Run button enters a cooldown state with a countdown timer. You must wait for the cooldown to finish before triggering another Product Sync.
Custom CSS Block for Smart Search
What It Does:
This setting allows you to add custom CSS specifically for the Smart Search feature on your store. By enabling this option, you can apply personalized styling that impacts only the Smart Search experience, leaving the rest of your site unaffected.
How to Use It:
Step 1: Go to the Smart Search Global Settings page in your Rebuy admin.
Step 2: Locate the Custom CSS block option.
Step 3: Enter your custom CSS code in the provided block to override default styles or add your own.
Step 4: Click Save to apply the custom styles to the Smart Search feature.
Search Results Page
Effortlessly customize your store's search experience by defining a custom URL.
• Default URL: Shopify's standard search page is located at/search.
• Custom URL: To set up a custom search page, create a new page in Shopify. Keep in mind that Shopify URLs include the /pages/prefix. For example, if you create a page named "Discover", your custom search URL should be /pages/discover.
Merchandising Rules
Merchandising Rules is a rule-based configuration feature within Smart Search that gives you granular control over how products are ranked and displayed in search results. Using Merchandising Rules, you can automatically boost, demote, or hide products based on specific product attributes — helping you surface the right products when shoppers search your store.
Merchandising Rules replaces the legacy Search Influence rules. If you had existing global Search Influence rules or out-of-stock (OOS) settings configured, those have been automatically migrated.
Exclude Unwanted Terms
Excluded Terms is a section in Smart Search Global Settings that keeps unwanted products and offensive searches out of your search results. Auto-remove offensive terms blocks offensive searches automatically, and Terms to Exclude leaves products with your own terms in their product title or URL handle out of the Smart Search Results Page.
Block offensive searches automatically
Auto-remove offensive terms is a checkbox in the Smart Search Excluded Terms section that uses Google's Safe Search API to automatically detect offensive search queries. When a shopper's search is flagged as offensive, the shopper sees a no results page instead of products. You don't maintain this list yourself, since Google's Safe Search API decides which searches are offensive.
Exclude your own search terms
Terms to Exclude is the list in the Smart Search Excluded Terms section where you add words for products you don't want shoppers to find on the Smart Search Results Page. When a shopper searches, the Results Page still shows results, but leaves out any product with one of your excluded terms as a whole word in its product title or Shopify URL handle. Capitalization doesn't matter.
For example, with 'board' on your Terms to Exclude list, products titled 'The Western Board' and 'The Retro Board' are left out of search results. Products titled 'Snowboard' will still appear in results, because the excluded term has to match a whole word and 'Snowboard' is a different word from 'board'.
Keep the following in mind about Terms to Exclude:
Terms to Exclude checks only the product title and the product's Shopify URL handle. A product with the excluded term only in its description, a variant title, or its product tags still shows on the Results Page.
Terms to Exclude applies only to the Smart Search Results Page. Products with an excluded term in their title still show in Quick View as shoppers type.
To keep a product out of both the Results Page and Quick View, use Specific Products under Excluded Products, covered in the Exclude Products from Search section of this article.
How to set up Excluded Terms in Smart Search
To set up Excluded Terms in Smart Search:
Go to the Smart Search Global Settings page in your Rebuy admin.
Locate the Excluded Terms section and click Edit.
Check or uncheck Auto-remove offensive terms.
Under Terms to Exclude, type a term in the Add terms field and click Add. Repeat for each term you want to block.
Click Save.
To see how each setting works without leaving the admin, hover over (or click) the tooltip icon next to Auto-remove offensive terms or Terms to Exclude.
What do shoppers see when their search contains an excluded term in Smart Search?
When a shopper's Smart Search search contains one of your excluded terms, the Results Page still shows results, but leaves out any product with the excluded term as a whole word in its product title or URL handle. For example, with 'board' on your Terms to Exclude list, a search for 'board' shows 'Snowboard' but not 'The Retro Board', because 'Snowboard' is a different word from 'board'. If every matching product has the excluded term in its title or URL handle, the Results Page shows no products. Quick View is not affected by Terms to Exclude, so products with the excluded term in their title still show there as shoppers type.
Why is a product missing from Smart Search results after I removed an excluded term from its title?
A product can stay off the Smart Search Results Page after you remove an excluded term from its title because Terms to Exclude also checks the product's Shopify URL handle, and Shopify doesn't update the handle when you rename a product. For example, renaming 'The Western Board' to 'The Western Deck' keeps the handle the-western-board, so the product stays excluded while 'board' is on your list. To show it again, edit the URL handle under Search engine listing on the product page in Shopify, or remove the term from Terms to Exclude.
Exclude Products from Search
What It Does:
This setting allows you to exclude specific products or product tags from appearing in search results.
How to Use It:
Step 1: In the Excluded Products section, choose the products or tags you want to hide.
Step 2: Select the products or tags, and they will be excluded from search results.
Step 3: Click Save.
Excluding products with Product Tags will only exclude them from the Results Page and NOT the Quick View. To exclude products from Quick View results you will want to use the Specific Products section.
Exclude Collections from Search
What It Does:
This setting allows you to exclude entire product collections from appearing in search results, giving you more control over which products are searchable.
How to Use It:
Step 1: Go to the Excluded Collections section.
Step 2: Select the collections you want to exclude.
Step 3: Click Save.
By default, excluding a collection also excludes its products from being returned from search results completely. You can change this by deselecting the "Hide Products" option when selecting collections.
Exclude Content: How to Exclude Blog Posts and Pages from Smart Search
Excluded Content is a feature in Smart Search Global Settings that lets you prevent specific blog posts and pages from appearing in content search results. It appears at the bottom of the Global Settings page, below the Excluded Collections card. Any content you exclude is suppressed from content results across both the Results Page and Quick View.
What Smart Search Excluded Content Setting does
Excluded Content gives you direct control over which blog posts and pages can surface in content search results, without unpublishing or restructuring your Shopify content. When you enable Content Search, every published blog post and page becomes eligible to appear in results. Use Excluded Content to curate that list by removing outdated promotions, internal pages, or any content you do not want shoppers to find through search.
Excluded items appear as scrollable rows within the Excluded Content card, similar to how excluded collections display in the Excluded Collections card above it.
How to use the Excluded Content setting in Smart Search
Go to the Smart Search Global Settings page in your Rebuy admin.
Locate the Excluded Content card.
Click Edit to open the Excluded Content slideout.
In the Content to Exclude card, type the name of a blog post or page into the Search content field.
Select the content you want to exclude. It appears in the Excluded Content list below the search field.
To remove an item from the list, click the X icon next to it.
Click Save to apply your changes.
Important things to know about Excluded Content
Excluded Content applies to content search results only. It does not affect which products appear in search.
Exclusions apply globally across both the Results Page and Quick View. You cannot exclude content from one surface but not the other.
Content must be searchable by name using the Search content field. There is no bulk upload or CSV import for exclusions.
Content Search must be enabled for Excluded Content to change what shoppers see. If Content Search is off, exclusions have no visible effect. See Smart Search: Content Search for setup.
Learn More About Smart Search
Merchandising Rules are one part of a broader set of tools available in Smart Search. The articles below cover everything from installation to advanced configuration and customization.