Predictive search
Citera’s search panel opens when a shopper clicks the search icon in the
header (or presses / on desktop). As they type, live suggestions appear:
products, collections, articles, and pages.
What appears in results
The panel shows:
- Query suggestions — Shopify’s built-in phrase autocomplete
- Products — matching products with image, title, price
- Collections — matching collection names
- Articles — matching blog post titles
- Pages — matching static-page titles
Everything is powered by Shopify’s search backend — no external index, no configuration.
Turn categories on / off
Open the theme editor
Click Header
Find Predictive search settings
Toggles for what shows in results:
- Show products — usually on (main revenue source)
- Show collections — useful if you have well-defined categories
- Show articles — useful if you blog actively
- Show pages — useful for policy pages like “Shipping”
Turn off any category with no real content — an empty section adds noise.
Save
Product result appearance
Each product result shows:
- Product image (small square, variant-aware if applicable)
- Product title
- Price (with compare-at pricing if on sale)
- Vendor name (optional)
To toggle vendor:
Speed
The panel is fast because it uses Shopify’s /search/suggest.json endpoint,
which is cached and served from Shopify’s edge. Typical response: 50–100ms.
Search page fallback. If a shopper presses Enter on a query, they land on
the full search results page (/search) — Citera renders this with the same
filters and sort as a collection page.
Keyboard shortcuts (desktop)
/— focus the search input (from anywhere)- ↑ / ↓ — move through suggestions
- Enter — go to the highlighted result
- Esc — close the panel