When searching for products from a term that has synonyms, Intelligent Search may not retrieve the products from the synonyms.

This behavior happens because products associated with the synonym did not reindex to be linked to a product after adding or updating a synonym. It is caused by the re-index notification being lost in the process.

Simulation

To ensure that this issue is happening, be aware of the following evidence:

1 - The number of results differs from each other.

• On Admin > Storefront > Intelligent Search > Synonyms, create or update an unidirectional synonym.
• Then, on Admin > Storefront > Intelligent Search > Explained Search, compare the results when searching for the original term and the synonym.
• When comparing the results, the results when searching for the synonym don't include all the products when searching for the original specific term.

2 - The last re-index date of a product is older than the date of the synonym creation.

• Choose one product from the original term that does not appear when searching using the synonym.
• Compare the dates between the last re-index date of the product (Admin > Storefront > Intelligent Search > Indexing history ) and the creation/update date of the synonym (Admin > Storefront > Intelligent Search > Synonyms).
• If the last re-index date of a product is older than the date of the synonym creation, then this case can fit with this KI.

Workaround

Open a ticket to the CX team with the evidence information so that we can re-index the affected products.