Setup guide

Three steps, about two minutes. No other app to install, and no filter configuration — AI Search Pro indexes your catalogue itself.

1. Install the app

Install AI Search Pro from the Shopify App Store and choose a plan. Shopify handles the billing; the app never sees your payment details.

2. Turn on the theme app embed

In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes and click Customise.
Open App embeds in the left sidebar.
Switch on AI search, then click Save.

The app now takes over your theme’s existing search button and search field. No Liquid files are edited — switching the embed back off restores your theme’s original behaviour exactly.

3. Add the AI search results page

Pressing Enter in the search box takes shoppers to your /search page. Adding this block is what makes that page AI-powered too, with a filter sidebar, sorting and load-more.

In the theme editor, use the template picker at the top to open Search results.
Click Add block in a section and choose AI search results.
Position it above the theme’s own results and save.
Optionally, put your theme’s own result grid selector into Advanced → Hide your theme’s own results so shoppers don’t see two grids.

Leave your theme’s native results in the template underneath. The AI block only hides them after its own results have loaded, and removes itself entirely if it has nothing to add — so a failed request, or a plan that doesn’t include the search page, always leaves shoppers with standard results rather than a blank page.

Filters, sorting and merchandising are configured in the app under Appearance → Search page, not in the theme editor, because what they can do depends on your plan.

What about product filters?

Nothing to do. AI Search Pro builds its own index of your catalogue on install, so filtering by category, product type, brand, tags, colour, size and price works on your store exactly as it is.

Most AI search apps route filtering through Shopify’s built-in filter engine, which only honours filters you’ve set up in the separate Search & Discovery app — so they quietly return nothing for “black waterproof jacket” until you go and configure a second app. AI Search Pro doesn’t depend on it. If you happen to use Search & Discovery for other reasons, that’s fine; it makes no difference either way.

The index updates itself whenever you create, edit or delete a product, and reconciles in full once a day. After a bulk import or a CSV upload you can force it immediately with Resync catalogue on the app home page.

Voice search and related products

Both are switched on in Appearance → Search dropdown, under When a shopper is stuck.

Voice search puts a microphone in the search box. The shopper’s own browser asks their permission and does the transcribing — no audio is recorded or sent anywhere. The microphone hides itself in browsers that don’t support it, so nobody sees a button that can’t work.

You might also like appears only when a search turns up four products or fewer — the point at which a shopper usually gives up. A full page of results is left alone.

Troubleshooting

The overlay doesn’t open when I click search

Some themes use unusual markup for their search button. In the theme editor, open the AI search app embed, expand Advanced, and put a CSS selector for your search button into Custom search trigger selector. If you’re not sure what to use, send us your store URL and we’ll find it.

Results don’t reflect what shoppers asked for

Check that the attribute in question is actually on your products: the app can only filter by colour if your products have a colour option or tag. The app home page lists exactly what it found in your catalogue, and Search rules lets you teach it words your customers use that your product titles don’t.

Products are missing from results

Search only returns products published to the Online Store sales channel. Draft and unpublished products are correctly excluded. If you have just published something and it isn’t appearing yet, press Refresh search results in Settings.

Prices look wrong in another country

Prices come from Shopify Markets using the shopper’s own country context, so they should match your product pages exactly. If they don’t, check that the market in question has pricing configured in Settings → Markets.

The filter sidebar is empty or missing

Two things have to be true: your plan includes the filter sidebar (Growth and above), and Show the filter sidebar is on under Appearance → Search page. The sidebar only lists facets that actually match something in the current results, so a very narrow search can legitimately show few or none. If it’s empty on every search, your products may have no filterable attributes yet — the app home page says so directly.

Sorting by best selling

Available on Growth and above, alongside relevance, price, newest and alphabetical. Turn the sort control on under Appearance → Search page and pick which order shoppers land on first.

Best-seller order is Shopify’s own, captured when the app syncs your catalogue. If you’d rather feature specific products, use Top picks on the same screen to show a band of best sellers — or a collection you choose — above the results.

My cart count doesn’t update after Add to cart

The item is definitely in the cart — only the badge is stale. Themes have no standard way to announce a cart change, so the app updates the most common cart-count elements and fires a ai-search:cart-updated event your theme can listen for. Send us your theme name and we’ll add support for it.