Empty Query

The Empty Query is the customization surface that controls what shoppers see when they first land on the search interface without typing anything: a “no query yet” panel that surfaces popular terms, suggested words, category links, and pinned products. It lives in the admin under the search customization area and is exposed in the PrestaShop back office under Merchandising.

This page explains how the empty-query model works. The PrestaShop entry point and workflow are documented in Empty Query (PrestaShop).

What it controls

The empty-query surface has four editor sections, all visible on a single page in the admin:

1. Popular Products — individual products that are pinned to the empty panel regardless of the search term the shopper later types. This is the “featured products” rail that appears when the search box is empty.
2. Popular Categories — category links surfaced alongside (or instead of) the term suggestions. The product detail is not on the empty-query page itself; only the category list.
3. Popular Queries — short search phrases surfaced as chips. These are the “popular searches” the panel shows first.
4. Suggestions — single-word search terms surfaced as suggestions. Used for query-completion style hints.

Each section has both a manual list (pinned by the operator) and an auto-generated preview (suggested by the catalog indexing job). Manual entries always take precedence and stay live across reindexes; the auto-generated list is refreshed when the catalog is reindexed.

Manual vs. auto-generated

The empty-query page makes a sharp distinction between the two:

• Manual entries are written by the operator on the page. They are saved to the production configuration when the operator clicks Save and stay live for the shopper. The page marks each entry as Pinned.
• Auto-generated entries are produced by the catalog indexing job. They appear in a separate generated-baseline area under each section. The storefront can use this baseline after the manual pins; pinning an entry promotes it into the manual list so it keeps precedence across reindexes.

Manual pins apply immediately on save. Auto-generated data is refreshed by a catalog reindex, not by saving on this page. The two flows are independent — saving manual pins does not trigger a reindex, and a reindex does not touch the manual list. Empty Query does not use the Card Template publish step. Save updates the manual empty-query list used by the storefront on the next page load.

How the operator experience flows

The empty-query page presents four visually separate, collapsible editor cards (Popular Products, Popular Categories, Popular Queries, and Suggestions) in a single column. A single Save and a single Discard button group in the page header applies to all four editors as one combined payload — there are no per-editor save buttons.

For each editor, the operator:

1. Reviews the auto-generated preview to see what the indexing job currently suggests for that section.
2. Pins the entries they want to keep, using catalog search for products and categories, text entry for queries and suggestions, or the action beside a generated item.
3. Saves the combined manual list across all four sub-editors in a single click. The Save button is disabled until at least one editor is modified; the Discard button reverts every editor to the last saved state.

The four generated-baseline areas are read-only until an item is pinned. They display what the indexing job has currently produced and are refreshed only when the catalog is reindexed.

When the catalog has not yet been indexed for the current shop, the auto-generated preview panels show a “Generate an index to see auto-generated suggestions” message. The manual editor remains fully usable in that state — the operator can pin terms, words, categories, and products from the catalog search control, save them, and they reach the storefront.

Use the right surface for related changes

• The search results page layout, the search box behavior, and the autocomplete dropdown are independent surfaces, each with its own configuration page in the search customization area. See Search Box and Results Page.
• The search box input placeholder, the autocomplete layout, and the dropdown block ordering are configured on the Search Interface visual editor, not the empty-query page. See Autocomplete.
• The theme colors that paint the empty-query panel are part of the theme tokens and the CSS variables reference. They are not edited on the empty-query page.
• A page-local reindex action is not available on the empty-query page. The empty-query page reads the auto-generated preview that the catalog indexing job produces; refreshing the preview requires a catalog reindex, which is initiated from the catalog indexing area, not from this page.
• The taxonomy customization surface is part of the experimental feature set and is not currently exposed in the PrestaShop back office sidebar. The empty-query page does not route to it.

Related

• Empty Query (PrestaShop) — PrestaShop entry point, sidebar location, and save workflow.
• Search Box — the search surface the empty-query panel sits behind.
• Autocomplete — the dropdown block model, including the empty-query preview.
• Catalog Indexing — the indexing job that produces the auto-generated preview.