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Quick Search — Keyword Suggestions

The keyword-suggestions feature adds Google-style autocomplete to the header search box. Users see popular keywords as they type, can press → to accept, ↑↓ to navigate, and Enter to search.

Keyword suggestions in action

On by default — supply your own CSVs

Keyword suggestions are enabled by default (suggest_keywords defaults to On) and the demo stores ship with generated CSVs. Suggestions appear once the configured CSV file(s) are present at the keyword-file paths — supply your own keyword,rank CSV(s) to drive what shows. See the steps below.

Quick start

  1. Generate keywords — produce a CSV in the two-column keyword,rank format (see CSV format below). You can build it by hand or export it from your analytics / search-volume data. Whatever tool you use, the file must be in the keyword,rank format the theme expects.
  2. Upload the CSVs — to BigCommerce WebDAV → /content/ (drag & drop in Storefront → File Manager). Alternatively host on your own CDN.
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  1. Enable in Theme Editor:
    • Theme Editor → eShopping Theme section → Search heading → check Enable keyword suggestions ✅.
    • Set the Keywords file 1 path / Keywords file 2 path / Keywords file 3 path fields (see below).
  2. Save & publish. Try searching on your storefront.
eShopping Theme✕
Search
Enable keyword suggestions
Keywords file 1 pathOne slice of your keyword list (any keywords)/content/suggest-keywords-1
Keywords file 2 pathAnother slice — optional/content/suggest-keywords-2
Keywords file 3 pathAnother slice — optional/content/suggest-keywords-3

The path fields are pre-filled

The three path fields ship pre-filled with /content/suggest-keywords-1.csv, /content/suggest-keywords-2.csv, and /content/suggest-keywords-3.csv. If you enable the feature but don't upload files to those exact paths, the search box simply shows no suggestions — there's no on-screen error (only a console warning is logged). Either upload your CSVs to those exact paths, or change the paths to point at your files.

How the 3 files work

You can supply up to 3 CSV files. There's no functional difference between them — the theme concatenates all three and ranks every keyword together by its rank column (see CSV format). The split into three files is purely for your own convenience (e.g. to keep large lists manageable), not to change behaviour.

You don't have to use all three — leave a path empty to skip it.

File path syntax

Either:

  • Relative: /content/suggest-keywords-1.csv (resolves to your storefront's /content/ folder, served from BigCommerce WebDAV)
  • Full URL: https://cdn.example.com/keywords/keywords-1.csv (CORS must allow your storefront)

Lazy load vs eager load

  • If any of the 3 paths is relative, the theme lazy-loads the CSVs only when the user focuses the search box (except on the search-results page, where they load immediately). This avoids loading the CSVs for visitors who never use search.
  • If all paths are full URLs, the CSVs load immediately on page load (browser cache handles repeat visits).

CSV format

Each line is keyword,rank (UTF-8), where rank is an integer — a higher number means the keyword ranks higher and is shown first. Lines without a numeric second value are silently ignored, so a single-column file (bare words, no rank) produces no suggestions at all.

laptop,1000
phone,950
mouse,800
keyboard,780
monitor,600

When the user first focuses the search box (before typing), the top 10 keywords by rank are shown. As they type, the list is filtered to keywords that start with what they've typed, still ordered by rank. To control which keywords appear first, set higher rank numbers — the order of lines in the file does not matter.

Keyboard behaviour

Key Action
→ Accept the inline suggestion (the dimmed text after your cursor) — only when the cursor is at the end of the typed text; otherwise Right arrow just moves the cursor as usual
↑ ↓ Navigate the dropdown
Enter Submit the highlighted suggestion
Esc Close the search dropdown and clear the search box

Updating the keyword list

Refresh your keyword CSVs whenever your catalog changes significantly. Keep them in the keyword,rank format, then re-upload to the same paths — the theme picks them up on the next page-load.

Disabling

Either uncheck Enable keyword suggestions in the Theme Editor, or leave all 3 path fields empty.

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