Search is how users find what they are looking for on your marketplace. It is typically the first thing customers do when visiting your marketplace, so creating an intuitive experience is fundamental to building a successful marketplace.

In your marketplace, both anonymous users (users who are not logged in) and logged in users can search and view listings created by providers on your marketplace. Only logged in users can initiate transactions on these listings.

Searching for listings is possible via keyword search, location search, or both. Search results can be further filtered through category filters, filters based on default fields, and filters based on custom fields. Results can be sorted as well.

The marketplace search bar can support keyword searches or location searches. Keyword or location search is your marketplace search type, which is configured in Console > Build > Listings > Listing search.

Here is an example of a search bar with location search configured as the search type:

When location search is enabled, users search for listings by searching for a specific place, like a country, city, or street. You can also enable keyword filtering on location based searches to support both location and keyword search.

Learn more about location search.

Keyword search enables searching using keywords or phrases. When configured, the search bar takes text terms as input. The search returns any listing matching the search terms.

Learn more about keyword search.

The search page is where open listings are returned by the search. Users can further refine their search results using filters and sorting on the search page.

Here is an example search page with a filter based on a category enabled:

Your marketplace search page is always found at www.yourmarketplace.mysharetribe.com/s. The "/s" part in the address points to the search page. This is also true if you are using a custom domain. In this case, your search page would be found at www.exampledomain.com/s

Filters can be built from categories, default listing fields or custom listing fields. Filters based on categories or default fields are configured in Console > Build > Listings > Listing search. Filters based on custom fields are configured when creating these custom fields in Console > Build > Listings > Listing fields.

Learn more about the different filters available and how they work.

Listings are shown in the order they were created: more recent listings are shown ahead of older listings. Users can choose to sort by oldest listings first.

Users can also sort results by price (highest or lowest first). When searching by keyword, users can sort results by relevance to the keyword. Location searches are automatically sorted by distance to the searched-for location with nearer listings coming first.

The search page layout (where elements are placed and what elements are shown) is configurable. When configuring a custom filter, you can choose whether it shows as a primary filter or secondary filter. Primary filters feature more prominently. Learn more about filter placement.

The search page can be laid out in grid view or map view. Learn more about these layout options.

Your marketplace search engine queries and returns open listings from your marketplace database. Listings that are closed, pending approval by the admin, drafted, or deleted are not returned during a search.

User profiles, or the account page of a particular user account, is not searchable. User profiles, in other words, do not appear on the search page. User profiles can be accessed by pressing "View profile" button at the bottom of the listing page or through a direct link. User profile URLs are always www.yourmarketplace.mysharetribe.com/u/random-letters-and-numbers. The
"u/random-letters-and-numbers" points to the specific user profile. This is the same when using a custom domain.

Marketplaces that are about searching and finding profiles, such as a marketplace for hiring industry professionals based on their profile, should configure listings to look and behave like profiles. This way these listing profiles can be searched, filtered, and sorted.