Inference Search for WooCommerce

Requires WooCommerce 8.0 or later.

Inference Search replaces the theme’s search field with a full-screen search overlay. Customers see popular searches and recommended products before typing, and matching products while they type.

The search index is a set of tables in your own WordPress database. No search query, product or visitor data is sent to any external service.

Search that understands customers

• Typos: “pomap” finds “pompa”, and the overlay asks “Did you mean: pompa”.
• Polish word forms: “pompy”, “pompą” and “pompa” find the same products.
• Missing diacritics: “sol” finds “sól”.
• Synonyms: one line such as skimmer, protein skimmer makes both names find the same products.
• SKU: an exact SKU puts that product first.
• Ranking: name matches rank above category matches. Products in stock and better sellers rank higher, and out-of-stock products go last (configurable).

The overlay

• Popular searches and recommended products before typing: bestsellers, biggest discounts, newest or products you pick.
• Category suggestions while typing.
• Filters by category, price and availability, with the number of products for each value. They load only when a customer opens them, and “See all results” keeps them.
• Full-screen layout on phones, where the back button closes the overlay.
• Keyboard navigation, focus trap and screen reader announcements.
• The page’s own load is not slowed down: one small deferred script is loaded on every page, and the overlay’s stylesheet and data load only when a visitor moves to the search field.
• Optional voice search in browsers that support speech recognition.
• Accent color and CSS variables to match the theme.

Results page

“See all results” and Enter open the normal WooCommerce search results page, ranked by the same engine. The theme’s template, filters, sorting and pagination keep working.

Search insights

• Top searches of the last 30 days.
• Searches with no results, showing what customers look for and do not find.
• Click-through rate.
• Hiding a query from popular searches.
• CSV export.

Block and shortcode

The “Product search” block and the [inference_search] shortcode add a search button that opens the overlay. Existing theme search fields are taken over automatically.