Search Not Working or Products Not Displaying Correctly on Magento website

Using the Index Management feature of your Magento website can solve various problems related to products or categories not appearing as they should on your site. It is also the solution to fixing a broken site search function. Here’s how…

The Search Has Stopped Working on my Magento Website

Is the Search function on your Magento website no longer working? When you search are there products missing from the results which should be there? This can be a common problem when a large amount of products have been added to the website, changes have been made to the category structure or significant changes have been made to the products in your category.

I’ve Made Changes to My Product Catalogue but the Changes Don’t Appear on the Site

As with the Search function, changes to your products and the product structure may not be shown on the website without some intervention. If you have recently made changes to the category structure of your site, or have changed product attributes or even added a lot of new products and then gone to the front-end of the site you may have discovered that the changes have not appeared. Some products may be missing, or categories not appearing on the menus as you’d expect.

If you are having these problems, the solution to this may be more straightforward than you think. It is more than likely that you need to reindex your database.

What Is Magento’s Index?

Magento indexes your data so that it can access it easier and load your pages faster. Think of the Index like a map of your products. When you load a category page Magento uses this map to find the products within that category in the database quickly so it can pull the information from the database and show them on the page without having to search and waste valuable time.

When you make extensive changes to your product database through the Magento backend, Magento needs to rewrite the index to map the changes you have made. It will often update itself when you make minor changes, but if you make significant changes Magento needs a little intervention to rewrite the entire index.

Use Index Management to Rewrite Your Site’s Index

Following this guide to Reindex your Magento site should fix the issues raised above and could resolve many other catalogue related problems:

• In the Magento admin panel, hover over System, then click on Index Management in the drop-down menu…

  

• On the Index Management page click on the orange Select All link at the top of the table of options, which will tick all the boxes in the list…

  

• Staying on the Index Management page, ensure that Reindex Data is selected in the Actions select list and click the orange Submit button….

  

• When you have clicked the Submit button the page will reload and a success message will be displayed, however this can take a few minutes as you have quite a large catalogue. Please be patient and do not keep pressing the Submit button or navigate away from the page until you see this message…

  

• Once this Reindex Data process has been completed, any errors with the Search or products not displaying correctly should be corrected.