» New Site Search and Catalog API Betas Official Yahoo! Store Blog: Tips and Tricks for Ecommerce Success

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Earlier today, we released our new Site Search beta and Catalog API beta. The new Site Search beta is available for all Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and Yahoo! Store accounts, and the Catalog API beta is available for Merchant Solutions Standard and Professional accounts. For details about each of these features, please keep reading.

New Site Search (Beta Release)

Our new Site Search beta offers a number of features designed for better merchandising on your search results page and an improved search experience for your customers. When you enable the new Site Search beta for your store, customers can:

Add items to their cart directly from the search results page
View search results as a grid or a list, and choose the number of results they wish to see per page
Refine their search results using the filters you choose to enable, such as brand*, price, and category
Search for items within a specific category, or search all categories
Sort search results by relevance or price

* Please note that the brand filter is supported for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions accounts only, as this filter requires brand data to be available in Catalog Manager. (The Catalog Manager feature is not available for Yahoo! Store accounts.)

View search results as a grid or a list

You may also customize your Site Search settings using the new Site Search Settings page. Choose default display settings and customize the visual appearance of the search results page, show or hide the "Add to Cart" button and non-orderable items in search results, enable search filters and define the order in which they appear on the search results page, and more.

If you’re using Editor 3.0 templates, you can enable the new Site Search for your store using the Site Search Settings page. Learn how.

If you’re using Editor 2.0 templates or custom templates, along with enabling the new Site Search from the Site Search Settings page, you must also review search page header, footer, and CSS information that will be populated into new Search-page-header, Search-page-footer, and Search-page-css variables on the Variables page in Store Editor. Note: These variables will be available once you’ve selected the enable option on the Site Search Settings page. Learn more.

Customize your search settings using the Site Search Settings page

After you’ve selected the enable setting for the new Site Search, previewing your search results page in Store Editor is strongly recommended. In order to see a full preview on the site search preview page, you must perform a search that matches multiple items in your store. (Searches that match only a single item may result in your selected search filters not displaying in the search filters module.)

Once you’re ready to implement the new Site Search on your live site, you must perform a full Store Editor publish. After the new Site Search has been enabled on your live site, you may use the "Publish Search Settings" button on the Site Search Settings page or in Store Editor to publish updates to your site search settings. Note: If you update your site search settings and save your changes, but do not publish them using the "Publish Search Settings" button on the Site Search Settings page or in Store Editor, these saved changes will be published to your live site when you perform a Store Editor publish.

To get started with the new Site Search beta, click the "Site Search Settings" link in the Edit column of Store Manager. To learn more about this new feature, please visit our online help section.

Catalog API (Beta Release)

The new Catalog API is available for Merchant Solutions Standard and Professional accounts (Catalog Manager required). This API lets partners manage your product catalog through web service calls, and allows you to integrate your product catalog with third-party catalog management systems. Using the Catalog API, you can create, update, and delete items, as well as search and retrieve information from your product catalog.

Only authenticated partners who have provided you with a valid partner ID can use the Catalog API. If you’ve previously granted a partner access to our Order, Payment, or Checkout APIs, you can easily add Catalog API access using the API Settings tool, located in the Real-Time Links section of Store Manager. If you wish to grant new partners access to the Catalog API, learn how partners can apply for a partner ID.

For Catalog API documentation and XSD information, please see our API documentation in online help.

As we look ahead to a busy and successful holiday shopping season, the team here at Yahoo! Small Business would like to thank you for your continued business and the opportunity to bring you these new features. We look forward to bringing you more great features and enhancements starting again in early 2012.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business
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Comments

the save & preview worked, but not the actual publishing. had to disable the new site search so i could publish changes. any thoughts??

Comment by paula — October 18, 2011 @ 3:32 pm

Hi Paula,

Thank you for your question. After you enabled the new Site Search, did you do a Store Editor publish using the “Publish” button in Editor (not the “Publish Search Settings” button in Editor or on the Site Search Settings page). To enable, it has to be a full Store Editor publish, and not a Search Settings publish. If you don’t see the Publish button on the preview page for a full Editor publish, you can exit out of Store Editor and access Store Editor from Store Manager and the Publish button should be displayed. If it’s the full Editor publish that’s not working, please let me know so I can have this looked into for you.

- Jennifer

Comment by Jennifer Farwell — October 18, 2011 @ 4:21 pm

How to increase the image size of the search results?

Desfault is 70 x 70. I want to have search result image size to be 90 x 90. Can you please tell me how to do it.

Comment by Modern Furniture Supply — October 24, 2011 @ 10:26 am

new site search doesn’t adopt the look and feel of the website…if you have a background other then white and/or any borders (including a simple black line) it will look very amateur. Is this going to get refined?

Other then it looking awful and not adopting the site look and feel it does search good.

I know this is “beta” but for once it would be great if yahoo store released a feature that didn’t require so much to get it working…I contacted support and they told me this is how its supposed to function.

Wouldn’t recommend even trying it unless you want a headache and I’m sure so many merchants were looking forward to this feature for the coming holiday season. Little bit of a let down…

Comment by Fred — October 25, 2011 @ 7:41 pm

Thanks for your question. While in beta release, the search result images aren’t re-sizable. Larger search result images will be coming with our new Site Search general release.
- Jennifer

Comment by Jennifer Farwell — October 26, 2011 @ 12:14 pm

Hi Fred,
Thank you for your feedback. A number of new Site Search visual elements can be customized using the Visual Display Settings section of the Site Search Settings tool, and merchants using custom templates or standard Editor 2.0 templates can also use the Search-page-css variable in Store Editor to refine some of the visual display settings. Please let me know what you’re looking to customize to match your site, and I can let you know if it’s currently possible in the beta release, or if it’s being looked at for our general release.
- Jennifer

Comment by Jennifer Farwell — October 26, 2011 @ 12:27 pm

Can you match the exact CSS used on the main site or in the checkout manager? For example a custom background? Framed border?

When is the general release due out?

Comment by Fred — October 26, 2011 @ 3:12 pm

Hi Fred,

Apologies for the delayed response. The GA release is currently planned for the first half of 2012, but as always, dates can be subject to change. You will definitely see an announcement on the blog when it’s out.

For the beta, this depends on which section of the search results page you wish to customize. The part of the page that contains the search results list or grid specifically (as opposed to the search page header or footer, for example) can be customized using the available controls on the Site Search Settings page: Results page background color (this will update the background color in the search results area, but only a color can be set at this time — custom backgrounds outside of specifying a color can not be set using this control), Item link color, Global font color, Item price color, “Add to Cart” button color, “Add to Cart” button text color, and Default font. This section cannot be customized using CSS, and a control to add framed borders is not available. However, other page elements, such as the header and footer, can be customized to match your checkout pages or your storefront pages using the Search-page-header, Search-page-footer, and Search-page-css variables. If you’re using custom templates, the header, footer, and checkout CSS information should have been pulled into these variables from what was in your Checkout & Registration Manager. If you’re copying over content from storefront pages for the header and footer, then you will also need to copy over the CSS used for these pages — but yes, it is possible to match your page header, footer, and the CSS used for these in this way.

-Jennifer

Comment by Jennifer Farwell — November 8, 2011 @ 1:35 pm