Intelligent Search – typos, synonyms, live analytics

About the Extension

A search that understands what customers mean – without Elasticsearch, without a Doofinder subscription

Kommora Intelligent Search replaces Shopware's built-in search with a typo-tolerant, semantically enhanced live search backed by a full analytics dashboard in the admin. Everything runs natively on your existing MySQL/MariaDB – no extra server, no monthly fees, no external dependency.

Why this plugin?

• Elasticsearch is overkill for most shops. For catalogues up to ~100,000 products a self-maintained trigram index in MySQL is more than enough – millisecond-fast, no extra infrastructure, no extension required.
• Doofinder is expensive and sends data to the cloud. This plugin runs fully locally – no external APIs, GDPR compliant, no monthly fees.
• The built-in search finds too little. Customers make typos, use colloquial language ("handy" instead of "smartphone"), search for colours and sizes. This search understands that.
• Without analytics ranking is blind. What are customers really searching for? Where do they land on empty pages? What do they click, what do they buy? All visible in the dashboard.

Feature overview

4-layer fuzzy match (typo tolerance)

• Prefix match – finds words that start with the input
• Trigram index – finds words with common 3-letter blocks (native in MySQL, no extension required)
• Substring match with wildcards – finds words with individual wrong/missing characters (example: "sh_rt" → "shirt")
• Levenshtein distance – finds words with at most 1 (short words) or 2 (medium words) edit operations distance
• Examples that work: "soud" finds "sound", "shrt" finds "shirt", "kbel" finds "cable"

Query understanding (semantic structure)

• Brand detection from indexed manufacturer names – brand match boosts ranking ×2.0
• Colour detection DE/EN (black/schwarz, red/rot, blue/blau, navy/marineblau, green/gruen, …) – colour match boosts ×1.5
• Numbers with units are extracted in structured form: 128 GB, 55 inch, 500 ml, 4 kg, 12 W
• Apparel sizes (XS/S/M/L/XL/XXL/3XL/4XL) are pulled from the query
• Example: "samsung tv 55 red" automatically prioritises red Samsung TVs in 55 inch

Concept expander (poor-man's semantic without LLM)

• Built-in DE/EN dictionary with 30+ e-commerce categories
• Electronics: smartphone ↔ handy/mobile/iphone/samsung; laptop ↔ notebook/macbook; tablet ↔ ipad; headphones ↔ headset/earbuds; TV ↔ television/led-tv/oled/qled
• Apparel: shirt ↔ t-shirt/top/polo; pants ↔ jeans/chino; shoes ↔ sneaker/boots; jacket ↔ coat/anorak
• Furniture: sofa ↔ couch; chair ↔ armchair/stool; table ↔ desk/dining-table; lamp ↔ floor-lamp
• Kitchen + books + colours as additional clusters
• Light German suffix stemming: "Schuhe" ↔ "Schuh", "Kabels" ↔ "Kabel", "Lampen" ↔ "Lampe"

CTR re-ranking (learns from clicks)

• Formula: 1 + ln(1 + Σ 1/(1+days_since_click/7)) with 30-day time decay
• A click from today counts 1.0, one from 7 days ago 0.5, from 14 days ago 0.33
• No machine learning required – pure aggregation, deterministic, transparent
• Visible impact after 1–2 weeks of normal shop usage

Order conversion tracking

• Subscriber on CheckoutOrderPlacedEvent
• For each order line item it checks whether the customer clicked the product from search within the last 60 minutes
• Analytics record is marked as converted=1 + order_id stored
• Result: real purchases per search query and purchases per clicked product visible in the dashboard

Analytics dashboard (admin)

• Menu under Extensions → Search Analytics
• 6 KPI cards: total searches, unique queries, clicks, click-through rate, orders from search, zero-result rate (red above 20%)
• Timeline chart with 7/30/90-day selection – searches (black) + clicks (yellow) per day, empty days filled with 0 bars
• Most searched terms – top 25, sortable by searches/clicks/orders/CTR/avg. results
• Zero-result queries (action required) – the golden list for new synonyms or missing inventory
• Most clicked products from search – with product number, name, clicks, orders, distinct queries
• Filters: timeframe and sales channel
• Refresh button for live refresh

Instant suggest dropdown

• Reacts from the first character – customer can keep typing, results narrow down live
• Empty state: recent searches (from localStorage) + popular queries (from analytics log of the last 30 days)
• Layout modes: comfortable (spacious with images), compact (denser), grid (card view)
• Optional brand and category facets in the sidebar
• List price/tier pricing with discount badge
• In-stock/out-of-stock chip per product
• "Show all XX results" link to full search page
• MutationObserver for ESI-loaded headers (no init timing bug)

Admin configuration

• Indexing: batch size, auto-reindex on product change on/off
• Ranking & field search: custom-field whitelist as multi-select (only selected fields become searchable), individual weights per field (title, SKU, manufacturer, description, tags, custom fields)
• Design: layout mode, colour picker for accent, text-on-accent, highlight, border-radius, display options (stock chip, list price)
• Search: default typo tolerance, facets on/off, analytics on/off
• Instant UI: thumbnails, results per category (default 6), category/brand suggestions, recent searches, popular queries
• Changes to ranking weights, custom-field whitelist or typo tolerance automatically trigger a background reindex

Reindex without CLI

• One-click reindex directly from the admin module – no CLI access required
• Runs asynchronously via Symfony Messenger in the background
• Auto-reindex on product changes (price, title, description, availability)
• Auto-reindex on config changes that affect ranking