Excluding suggestions from autosuggest

You don't have to do anything to automatically suggest search terms for your customers. Bloomreach Search and Merchandising takes care of that for you. But if there are queries that have autosuggestions you prefer to exclude, then you can create exclusion rules.

How does an autosuggest exclusion rule work?

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An autosuggest exclusion rule works by removing the association between a site visitor's query and the suggestions that Bloomreach automatically display for that query.

Create an exclusion rule

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1. Open the Autosuggest page: Search & Merchandising → Site search → Autosuggest blocklist

2. Click Add New for a new rule or click the pen icon next to an existing rule to change it.

3. Begin typing a search term in the Terms Search text box. 
   
   Very quickly, Bloomreach displays a checkbox list of suggested queries as you type.
   
   Click the queries that you don't want automatically suggested to customers.
   
   Click Done.

4. You can enter more queries for this rule before continuing if you want to.

5. Give your rule a name in the Autosuggest Rule Name box.

6. Click Save to close the rule and enable it.
   
   The rule appears in your Custom Autosuggest Rules. New rules are enabled by default, but you can click the green toggle to disable any rule.

Create an exclusion rule for a specific language

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To configure an Autosuggest blocklist rule for a specific language, select the language from the language-based dropdown.

For users with Global/All Access, there might be a "Global" option present for which the result set will be from the language marked as default.

What can I do with an existing exclusion rule?

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You can modify existing exclusion rules to do the following:

• Enable or disable rules
• Delete rules
• Add or remove terms
• Preview currently enabled rules to see what your customers see in the autosuggest dropdown list

Test a search query's autosuggestions

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You can run a quick test to see the list of search queries that Bloomreach Search and Merchandising suggests when your site's visitors start to type their search terms. Just open the Autosuggest page and begin typing the search query in the Live Previewbox. Just like your visitors' own experiences with that query, a dropdown list of automatically suggested queries displays as you type.

You can use this method to test any exclusions rules that you or someone else created. The list that appears as you type your query reflects the changes from exclusion rules. You can toggle the status of rules and retest if you want to see a before-and-after autosuggest list.

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Did you change or create any rules within the past hour or so?

It takes up to an hour to see your changes go live, but testing works immediately.

Best practices

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To prevent your list of exclusion rules from being too long for you to manage, consider creating rules that exclude many autosuggestions that are very similar rather than creating many granular exclusion rules. 

But don't create large rules that have only somewhat related or unrelated exclusions. If you need to remove exclusions from such rules later, then you might have a hard time finding the individual exclusions.

If you already have exclusion rules defined in Bloomreach Search and Merchandising, then check your Live Preview results with appropriate-looking rules enabled and disabled before you create a new rule. Consider modifying an existing rule if you want to exclude an autosuggestion that's related to exclusion in a rule that already exists.

Troubleshooting

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A rule might be inadvertently excluding terms that you want autosuggested. You can use the preview feature to test your exclusion rules. Type search terms into the Live Preview text box and examine the autosuggestions that are displayed in the dropdown list. 

If you don't see the autosuggestions that you expect, then examine your exclusion rules to see if any of them are preventing relevant autosuggestions. If you have multiple exclusion rules, then here's how to diagnose a problematic rule:

1. Disable all of the suspect rules.
2. Enable one of the suspect rules.
3. Use the Live Preview text box.
4. Continue until you find the rule or rules causing problems with your autosuggestions.