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Fields and priorities

Use this page when you need the conceptual model behind the Fields tab in the Kea Labs Search Pro admin: what a field is, the four priority levels, what the autocomplete toggle does, and how the priority order reshapes which products a query returns.

For the PrestaShop-specific how-to — where the controls live in the PrestaShop back office, what each priority level means, and the recommended save workflow — see Search fields and priorities (PrestaShop).

What a field is

Section titled “What a field is”

A field is one column of the product record that the search engine considers when a shopper types a query. The Fields tab lists every field that the search engine knows about for the current shop. The admin presents readable names such as Product Name, Product Parameters, Product Tags, Vendor, Model, and Product Description, plus a small number of Kea-managed ranking fields.

You cannot add or remove fields from this list. The list is fixed by the search engine schema. What you can change is how much weight each field carries in the ranking, and (where the store setup allows) whether the field participates in autocomplete suggestions.

What each row on the page contains

Section titled “What each row on the page contains”

Every field row has three parts:

Part What it does
Field name The label of the field (for example, Name, Reference, Description). The column also shows a short description that explains what the field is for.
Priority A four-part control that sets how strongly the field contributes to a match.
Autocomplete A switch that turns the field on or off in the autocomplete suggestions shown in the storefront search bar. The column is hidden when the current store setup does not support per-field autocomplete.

The four priority levels

Section titled “The four priority levels”

The priority control has four positions. From lowest to highest contribution to the match score:

  1. Ignored — the field has the lowest ranking contribution. Do not rely on matches in this field to promote products.
  2. Low — the field contributes at a restrained weight.
  3. Normal — the field is a regular ranking signal and contributes more than Low.
  4. Boosted — the field contributes the most. Matches in this field dominate the ranking.

The numeric weight of each level is an implementation detail of the ranking formula and is not surfaced in the UI. The four stops are the only way to adjust a field’s contribution.

[!NOTE] The relative order is fixed: Ignored is less than Low, which is less than Normal, which is less than Boosted. The control cannot be set to anything in between.

What priority does in practice

Section titled “What priority does in practice”

A product that matches a query in a Boosted field will usually rank above a product that matches the same query in a Normal field. The same is true for Normal over Low: an exact match in a Normal field can put a product on the first page even when an Ignored field happens to contain the query string.

A useful way to think about the control:

  • Ignored — the field is not useful as a ranking signal. Use it for fields that should not promote products.
  • Low — the field should contribute only lightly.
  • Normal — the field is one of the main ranking signals. Use this for fields that describe the product in shopper terms (for example, description_short).
  • Boosted — the field is the dominant ranking signal. Reserve this for the field that best identifies the product (for example, name).

Autocomplete

Section titled “Autocomplete”

The Autocomplete column is a per-field switch. When the switch is on, the field contributes to the list of suggestions that the storefront search bar shows as the shopper types.

The autocomplete column may not appear in the UI for every shop. Some store setups do not support per-field autocomplete. In that case, the Autocomplete column is hidden.

[!TIP] If you expected to see the Autocomplete column and it is missing, ask your developer or integrator to confirm whether your store setup supports per-field autocomplete.

How a change reaches the storefront

Section titled “How a change reaches the storefront”

Field settings affect ranking and autocomplete data. The search index must be refreshed before shoppers see the new behavior.

Platforms can handle that refresh differently. In PrestaShop, saving the Fields page starts or queues catalog indexing automatically. You do not need a separate manual indexing step for the normal Fields workflow.

An index refresh is needed when:

  • a field’s priority is changed;
  • a field’s autocomplete switch is changed on a store setup that supports per-field autocomplete.

An index refresh is not required just to read the current values. The page reloads them from configuration when it opens.

Common mistakes

Section titled “Common mistakes”
  • Setting every field to Boosted. When every field has the same priority, the control no longer distinguishes matches. A common pattern is Boosted for Product Name, Normal for the next two most relevant fields, and Low for everything else.
  • Setting the most important field to Ignored by accident. The selection is stored per row. After editing, scroll to the bottom of the list and confirm the rows you touched are at the position you expected.
  • Looking for the Autocomplete column on every shop. The column is hidden when the current store setup does not support per-field autocomplete. The absence of the column is not a bug.
Section titled “Related pages”