Facets for search

This is for:

Merchandiser
Important

The Facet manager is currently in closed beta. Contact your Coveo representative to learn about the Facet manager and get involved.

In the Search manager of the Coveo Merchandising Hub (CMH), merchandisers can configure a facet collection to optimize the filtering experience for visitors on search result pages. facets are dynamic filters that help users narrow down their search results based on specific attributes such as brand, price, category, or other custom product attributes.

Facet collection displayed for a search| Coveo

With this tool, merchandisers can configure the Default facet collection, which applies to all queries sent from a given property. This default facet collection will be used for all search result pages, regardless of the specific query or context.

Facets in a facet collection can be configured to be either manually pinned or selected by relevance:

  • Manually pinned facets are manually selected by the merchandiser and will always appear in the facet collection. They will always appear at the top of the facet list, regardless of the visitor’s query. This lets you ensure that certain facets are always visible and easily accessible to visitors. See Manually pinned facets for more information.

  • Facets selected by relevance are dynamically determined by Coveo based on the visitor’s query. Merchandisers can decide how many of these to display in the facet collection. See Facets selected by relevance for more information.

Example

A merchandiser managing an outdoor gear site wants to improve its facet selection.

To help visitors easily refine their search results, the merchandiser creates a facet collection in the CMH and manually pins the Brand, Size, and Price facets, ensuring that these always appear at the top of the facet list.

To further optimize the shopping experience, the merchandiser activates the Facets selected by relevance feature and sets the number of dynamically selected facets to 2. These facets will be added alongside the manually pinned ones. In total, 5 facets will appear on any search result pages using this facet collection.

When a visitor searches for "backpacks", Coveo automatically determines which additional facets to display and the order in which they appear. In this case, the most relevant facets are Waterproofing and Volume. These are added to the manually pinned facets, resulting in the following facet list:

  • Brand

  • Size

  • Price

  • Waterproofing

  • Volume

Prerequisites

To create and manage facet collections in the CMH, you must have:

  • Updated Headless to version 3.24.1 or later. While this isn’t a strict requirement, it’s highly recommended to ensure compatibility with the latest features and improvements.

  • Enabled the following field options on the Fields (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page of the Coveo Administration Console for every field that you want to use as a facet in the CMH:

    • Select the Facet or Multi-value facet option to make the field facetable. This makes the field a facet field, which means that it can be used to filter search results based on its values.

    • Enable Facet Generator for every facet field that should be eligible for relevance-based selection.

Note

A field can be configured as a facet field even if the Facet Generator isn’t enabled for that field. This means that you can use the field as a manually pinned facet, but it won’t be automatically selected based on relevance.

Limitations

Facet management in the CMH is currently in closed beta and in active development. At this stage, you can’t use the CMH to create the following:

  • Hierarchical facets

  • Discrete numeric range facets

  • Custom ordering of facet values

Create a facet collection

To create a facet collection:

  1. In the CMH, access the Search manager.

  2. From the navigation tabs, select Facets.

  3. Click Create facet collection.

  4. Select the facet fields that you want to pin and click Add selected. These facet fields will always be pinned on top of search result pages. See manually pinned facets for more information.

  5. Once all of the facets you want to pin are selected, click Next: order and settings.

  6. On the Facets order and settings page, you can:

    • Set the order of pinned facets. This determines the order in which pinned facets should appear in search result pages.

    • Enable the Facets selected by relevance option. This lets you define dynamic spots that will be filled by Coveo with the most relevant facets based on the visitor’s query. See Facets selected by relevance for more information.

    • Click Modify next to a pinned facet to edit its settings.

      • On the Facet tab:

        • Under Displayed name, enter the facet title as it should be displayed to visitors for each available language.

          Note

          To define display names for relevance-based facets, temporarily add them to the pinned selection. Once the display names are set, you can remove them from the pinned list.

        • From the Facet type dropdown menu, you can update the default facet type (if applicable).

        • Under Selection options, choose whether the facet should be a single or multi-select facet.

        • Under Default state, choose whether the facet values for this facet should be open or closed by default.

      • On the Values tab:

        • Under Values sorting, choose the type of value sorting that should be applied to the facet values.

        • Under Number of values shown, enter the number of values displayed before a visitor needs to select Show more on the facet to see more values.

  7. Click Publish now.

Modify a facet collection

To edit an existing facet collection:

  1. In the CMH, access the Search manager.

  2. From the navigation tabs, select Facets.

  3. Locate the facet collection that you want to modify, and then click Modify > Edit collection.

Delete a facet collection

To delete a facet collection:

  1. In the CMH, access the Search manager.

  2. From the navigation tabs, select Facets.

  3. Locate the facet collection that you want to delete, and then click Modify > Delete.