Empathy Platform supports four search approaches, each designed to address different shopper behaviors and business needs. From fast, exact keyword matching search to fully conversational discovery, you can adopt the approach or combination of approaches that best meet your commerce store strategy and your shoppers’ expectations.

Keyword

Hybrid

AI-assisted

AI Mode

What is keyword search?

Keyword search is the foundation of commerce search in Empathy Platform. It matches the terms shoppers type in the search box against the indexed terms in your product catalog, returning product results that contain those exact keywords.

Fast and precise, keyword search excels when shoppers already know what they’re looking for and how to ask for it. It powers the core relevance search engine of Empathy Platform and serves as the baseline on which the rest of the search approaches are built. Configure search features such as synonyms, related tags, and next queries to reduce dead ends and fine-tune the search experience for your catalog’s specific terminology.

Explore keyword search features.

What is hybrid search?

Hybrid search combines keyword matching with semantic search to deliver product results that reflect the search intent behind the query. For example, when a shopper searches for “accent chair”, keyword search looks for that exact phrase in the catalog. However, semantic search understands that the shopper may also want results for decorative chair, patio chair, or armchair.

Grounded in semantic similarity, hybrid search translates search queries and product information into vector embeddings, numerical representations that place semantically similar meanings closer together in a dimensional space. This helps to infer synonyms, handle misspellings, and resolve long-tail or fuzzy queries that keyword search alone cannot address, particularly in zero- and low-result scenarios.

All semantic models are trained exclusively on your shoppers’ behavioral data and your product catalog, so no cross-domain data sharing occurs, and full data sovereignty is maintained.

Dive deep into hybrid search.

What is AI-assisted search?

AI-assisted search layers AI-powered features on top of keyword search to enrich the search experience without replacing the underlying relevance search engine. Rather than rebuilding search, these features use large language models (LLMs) to help shoppers express their search intent more naturally and discover products they might not have found otherwise.

All AI processing in Empathy Platform runs on private, in-house infrastructure to avoid sharing shopper data externally and training third-party models. The result is an AI search experience that serves your shoppers and your commerce store's needs while remaining fully under your control.

AI-assisted search is especially ideal for shoppers transitioning from keyword search to a more conversational search experience.

Discover AI-assisted search features: Related Prompts and AI Overview.

What is AI Mode?

AI Mode is Empathy Platform’s conversational search experience. It allows shoppers to express their search intent in natural language—as they’d talk to an in-store shopper assistant—and refine it across multiple turns without restarting or rephrasing from scratch.

Every conversational turn in AI Mode aligns with your catalog, so ranking rules, business logic, and merchandising strategies remain fully in effect. You can configure context, tone, and priorities through the Playboard, while the entire AI infrastructure runs on-premise, ensuring data governance, operational resilience, and a reduced environmental footprint.

While keyword search expects shoppers to know the right terms, and hybrid and AI-assisted search reduce the cost of imprecise queries, AI Mode serves as a complementary approach that handles complex, evolving intent end to end, going beyond what a simple query can capture.

Learn more about AI Mode.