Search Word Boosts: Precise Ecommerce Search Optimization

Hello Retail’s Search already offers ecommerce managers a wide range of levers to customize and optimize the search experience.

With the updated feature called Search Word Boosts, you can now zoom in on the words your shoppers actually type, and override the global settings. This means more precision, more relevance, and more confidence that every search reflects your goals.

Search Word Boosts: Adding more precision to ecommerce search

Search plays a major role in how shoppers discover products. With Search Word Boosts, you gain detailed control over your on-site search engine, allowing you to align results with customer intent. Additionally to the global rules, you can now optimize relevance at the keyword level — pinning top-performing items, excluding outdated ones, or prioritizing products with specific attributes.

This ensures more accurate, conversion-focused search results that match how shoppers browse and buy.

The short explanation:

Hello Retail Search lets you control how products appear in search results for specific keywords. You can now pin, exclude, or boost products based on attributes like brand or category — all from a single, streamlined setup page.

Example: Boost products OnSale for the search word “jeans”

Built for hands-on ecommerce managers

Search Word Boosting is designed for ecommerce teams who want to refine search results based on performance data, campaigns, or product priorities. Instead of manual workarounds or global search edits, you can now make quick, data-driven adjustments that immediately reflect in search results.

The feature supports common ecommerce use cases such as seasonal campaigns, high-margin product promotion, or clearance inventory reduction — all through precise, search relevance optimization.

Dive deeper with our support article.

When can you create keyword-specific rules

Search Word Boosting comes into play whenever you need to highlight or fine-tune products for specific business priorities. Typical scenarios include:

Keyword or product specificity

When shoppers look for something very particular, like paraben-free skincare, organic cotton shirts, or sugar-free snacks, you can boost the most relevant items so they appear first. This ensures precise searches lead directly to the products shoppers really want.

Time-limited promotional campaigns

During sales events or special launches, think Black Friday, back-to-school, or a new collection drop, boosting lets you temporarily rank key campaign products higher, keeping promotions front and center for the duration of the event.

Seasonal, overstock, or high-margin prioritization

Whether it’s winter coats, summer sandals, or high-margin accessories, you can lift the items that best support your seasonal strategies or profit goals, ensuring they’re never buried in standard search results.

Reduction of irrelevant results

For broad or ambiguous terms like gift, set, or suit, boosting allows you to push low-relevance products down the list, keeping search results focused and conversion-ready.

Quick guide: where to start

To get the most out of Search Word Boosting, begin by identifying the keywords that drive the most traffic or conversions on your site. Next, align your boosts with merchandising goals — for example, promoting new arrivals, high-margin products, or seasonal campaigns that need extra visibility and timely attention.

It’s a good idea to review boosted terms regularly to ensure performance matches your expectations and adjust when trends, inventory levels, or priorities change, as well as upcoming campaign timelines across key product lines.

Over time, track metrics like click-through rate, conversion rate, and revenue to measure the full impact. This way you can use the Search Engine as an active performance lever that supports your store’s growth, flexibility, and long-term strategy — helping you stay proactive and competitive as customer behavior evolves.

Watch the full presentation in our Fall Release webinar