Search Word Boosts give per-keyword control over results
Pin, exclude, or boost products in Search results for individual keywords. Promote seasonal items, push high-margin SKUs, or fix irrelevant matches without changing your global search settings.
Search Word Boosts give merchandisers per-keyword control over Search results. For individual keywords or groups of keywords, you can pin specific products to the top, exclude products that shouldn’t appear, or boost products by attribute so brands or categories rank higher.
Why it matters
Global search settings are tuned for overall relevance. They can’t always reflect what matters for a specific search at a specific moment. Search Word Boosts give merchandisers a per-keyword override: highlight seasonal items, promote high-margin SKUs, or clean up broad terms that return weak results, without touching your global configuration.
What’s new
- Pin products to the top of results for a specific search term.
- Exclude products you don’t want surfacing for a term.
- Boost by attribute so products with a given brand, title, category, keyword, or description rank higher (Product Search only).
- Group keywords into a single rule when multiple terms should behave the same way.
How it works
Search Word Boosts live under Search Engines → Search Query Rules. Create a rule, enter one or more search terms (comma-separated for groups), then choose what should happen:
- Pin product(s) — appear at the top in the order you set, with drag-and-drop reordering.
- Exclude product(s) — hide from results for this term.
- Boost by attribute — increase relevance weight for products with a chosen attribute value (Product Search only).
Rules take effect immediately after saving. Search-term matching is exact as typed.
Common scenarios
- Seasonal pushes. Boost summer dresses for “dress” during the season, or pin a holiday collection for gifting terms.
- High-margin SKUs. Boost products with a specific margin tag for high-intent terms.
- Fix broad terms. Exclude irrelevant matches for words like “gift”, “set”, or “suit”.
- Specificity for compound terms. Make “organic cotton shirts” or “sugar-free snacks” return only the products that match.
- Brand campaigns. Boost a specific brand for the search words you’re promoting that month.
- Clearance. Pin clearance SKUs for the keywords most likely to surface them.
Things to know
Rules work best when used strategically. Overuse them and the global algorithm has less room to optimize relevance dynamically. Products that go out of stock stay pinned, so review rules periodically. The same product can be pinned across multiple rules.
Availability
Available to all Hello Retail customers with Search.