Creating Visual Search Campaigns

Experience Search provides a powerful way to enhance how users find products on your site through image-based Visual Search or text-based Semantic Search. This guide walks you through setting up and optimizing your Semantic Search campaigns to deliver highly relevant search results that drive conversions.

When you first access Experience Search, you'll see a launch message: Click Get Started, and then select whether to start with Visual Search or Semantic Search. 

Before you start: Define a default search experience variation

Before you begin working with either Semantic Search or Visual Search, you must create a default campaign. This campaign appears automatically when you first access each campaign type.

The default experience acts as a fallback — it's available to all users, all the time, ensuring that search is always active and returns results, even when no specific targeting rules are met.

Because of this, the default campaign doesn't support targeting conditions. Other than that, creating it follows the same steps as any other campaign, as described in this article.  

Now you're ready to begin your work with Experience Search campaigns.

Step 1: Create a new experience

1. Go to Experience Search › Visual Search box › Edit.
2. Click the plus sign to create a new experience.
   
3. Name your experience, then click New Variation (or copy an existing variation). 
4. Set your targeting conditions, including:
   • Who: Target by user behavior, properties, technology, or geo-location
   • Where: Target specific pages or page types
   • When: Schedule the experience for a specific timeframe
5. Click Next to go to the Variation screen.

Step 2: Create your variation and search strategy

Every experience can have multiple variations, each providing different scenarios for A/B testing. To create a new variation, click New Variation or Copy from Another Experience.

In the Variation screen, the left-side panel is where you define your search strategy, while the right side provides a real-time preview of the results in a dedicated playground—so you can see exactly how your changes will impact the user experience.

The Strategy tab

Here you set up the number of items and filters.

Number of Items

The number of items returned in the results. Set any number between 1-50. 

Filters

Filters are a powerful way to refine search results. Use them to:

• Include: Show only a specific subset of products
• Exclude: Remove certain products from search results (say, recently purchased items)

To create a filter rule:

1. Click Add.
2. Name the rule.
3. Select Only Include or Exclude as the rule type. 
4. From the dropdown, select the product feed column you want to use as the filter and set conditions and values.

Localized values

Localized values are especially useful for international sites. If a product attribute is localized (for example, product price), you can set a rule to automatically apply the localized value for each user's locale. For example, only show products that are in stock in the locale.

Real-time values

You can pass a dynamic filter value, such as a price threshold, directly from the search request. The rule adjusts instantly for each user. For example, if a user searches for "shoes," the rule can automatically filter results to show only shoes that the user can purchase with their loyalty points.

To enable this:

1. Select Real-time value, then select an evaluator from the dropdown.
2. Enter the key name to use to pass the value in the request.

The JSON tab

You can pass custom JSON values in the Search API response. This is a powerful tool for advanced users to trigger different behaviors or interface changes based on the user’s search query.

Here are a few common use cases:

• Redirect: Automatically send a user to a specific category page for certain queries. 
  Example: When someone searches for “dress,” redirect them to the “Dresses” category page.
• Content: Show a specific banner or message in a dedicated slot for certain queries.
• Look and Feel: Dynamically change the layout of the search results (say, grid vs. List), or run A/B tests on visual elements.

To enable custom JSON:

1. Click the JSON tab in the variation panel
2. Define your custom JSON schema.
3. Generate variables for easier reference and dynamic content (optional).
4. This JSON payload will be included in every search request that matches the experience.
5. You can localize JSON variables by clicking the flag icons—just like with templates in Experience Web.

The Playground

The Playground is a testing environment where you can preview how search results will look across different locales, while also seeing your merchandising rules in action. It’s a great way to validate how your configurations affect the user experience.