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ParticleSearch ParticleSearch
Personalized discovery

Make discovery more relevant to the current shopper.

Use optional session-aware signals to make exploratory discovery more useful, with explicit controls for when personalization should participate.

The discovery context

Use context when it helps. Keep intent in charge.

A returning shopper may benefit from a more relevant discovery path, but a known SKU or constrained query still deserves exact treatment.

1

Session

Observe

2

Intent

Protect

3

Context

Adapt

4

Result

Present

5

Review

Measure

The merchant answer

Personalization is a discovery layer, not a reason to override exact intent. When enabled, it can use the shopper’s current path to make broad browsing more relevant while keeping identifiers, catalog eligibility, and merchant boundaries intact.

Guides and field notes

Go deeper when the decision needs detail.

Use these practical guides for the context, merchant decisions, and acceptance tests behind the capability you are evaluating.

Recommendation quality guide

Define eligibility, judgement, regression, and measurement checks.

Search experiments guide

Compare treatments without confusing a signal with a rollout decision.

Search profiles guide

Choose a coordinated starting posture before adding context.

The path

Make broad discovery feel more useful without making it opaque.

Personalized discovery has a narrow job: help open-ended browsing. Keep the setting explicit, compare the resulting journeys, and leave exact product lookup protected.

01

Choose the discovery job

Use personalization for exploratory browsing and relevant next steps, not as a blanket replacement for exact lookup, filters, or merchant rules.

02

Enable it deliberately

Treat personalization as an optional setting with the catalog, market, locale, segment, and storefront surface in view.

03

Compare the shopper path

Review engagement, refinements, exits, product actions, experiments, and protected queries before deciding whether the added context is useful.

Decision guide

Questions this capability should answer

Use these questions to decide whether this capability is the right next move for your store.

1

Where would context genuinely help?

Start with broad discovery, recommendations, or repeated browsing where the shopper has not supplied an exact product constraint.

2

Could context hide a better exact result?

Protect identifiers, filters, availability, and golden queries before judging a personalized treatment.

3

What evidence justifies keeping it on?

Use comparable behaviour and, where possible, a controlled experiment. More clicks alone do not prove better discovery.

What is included

Context-aware discovery with clear boundaries

Give exploratory shoppers a more relevant path while keeping the merchant in charge of where context may influence the experience.

Built around a merchant decision
01

Session-aware discovery

Use the shopper’s current path as an optional relevance signal for open-ended browsing.

02

Exact intent stays protected

Keep identifiers, filters, availability, and deliberate merchant rules ahead of broad personalization signals.

03

Market and locale context

Keep the storefront context visible when comparing discovery behaviour across markets or languages.

04

Controlled comparisons

Use experiment context and observed outcomes to compare discovery treatments instead of assuming personalization creates lift.

05

Behaviour evidence

Review refinements, exits, product actions, and downstream context to understand whether the journey improved.

06

Merchant-owned opt-in

Keep the capability explicit and reviewable. It is disabled by default until the merchant chooses to enable it.

A useful boundary

Good product decisions include what the feature cannot solve.

ParticleSearch gives your team more evidence and control. It does not remove the need for accurate product data, a clear merchandising goal, or a review of the result on your own store.

  • Personalized discovery is optional and disabled by default. It should be enabled only when the merchant has a clear discovery job and enough evidence to review it.
  • Personalization does not create missing catalog data, fix incorrect identifiers, or override exact product and availability constraints.
  • Observed engagement is not proof of causal lift. Use a controlled comparison when the rollout decision matters.

Keep exploring

See how this fits with the rest of the product.

All capabilities

Recommendations

Match a recommendation strategy to the shopping moment.

Search analytics

Review behaviour, segments, exits, and product actions.

Safe publishing

Keep the rollout reviewable and recoverable.

See it on your store

Give your team a clearer way to improve search.

Install through Shopify, enable the app embed in your published theme, and run one proof check on your own storefront. Eligible Shopify installs · Shopify confirms trial eligibility before approval. Billing remains handled through Shopify.

Install on Shopify How it works