Boost Shopify Product Search Rankings Using Metafields in Search & Discovery

This step watches your Shopify store for any product update and kicks off the workflow the moment one is detected. It captures the full product record, including the product ID that every subsequent step needs to locate the right metafields. No configuration is required — the trigger fires automatically on every product save, whether you're editing a title, price, description, or anything else. If you only want it to fire for specific products, you can add a filter step after this one.

This step looks up a specific metafield on the updated product using the namespace custom and the key boost_keywords. That metafield is where you store the search terms you want this product to rank for — for example, a list like ["waterproof jacket", "rain gear", "outdoor coat"]. If the metafield doesn't exist yet on a product, this step will return an empty value, which the next step will catch. You'll need to make sure this metafield exists on your products before the workflow can do anything useful — you can add it directly in the Shopify product editor under "Metafields."

This filter checks whether the boost_keywords metafield retrieved in the previous step actually contains a value. If it's empty, the workflow stops here and no changes are made to the product. If it contains keywords, the workflow continues to the next step. No configuration is needed — the filter is already set up to check for an empty value. This is especially useful for stores with large product catalogs where only some products have boost keywords defined.

This step reads the existing search boost data from Shopify's native Search & Discovery metafield, stored under the namespace shopify--discovery--product_search_boost and the key queries. This is the same metafield that Shopify's Search & Discovery app reads when ranking products in search results. The value is a list of search terms already associated with this product. This step runs automatically and requires no configuration — the namespace and key are fixed values defined by Shopify.

This step runs a custom JavaScript script that takes the existing boost terms from Step 4 and the new keywords from Step 2, combines them into one list, removes any duplicates, and filters out blank entries. The result is a clean, comma-separated string ready to be written back to Shopify. No configuration is needed — the logic runs automatically. Here's the full script for reference:

const Mesa = require('vendor/Mesa.js');

module.exports = new class {
  script = (payload, context) => {
    const vars = context.steps;

    // Parse existing boost values from Retrieve Search Boost Metafield step
    let boostValues = (JSON.parse(vars.shopify_2.value) || [])
      .map(v => String(v).trim());

    // Parse new boost values from Retrieve Product Metafield step
    let newValues = (JSON.parse(vars.shopify_1.value) || [])
      .map(v => String(v).trim());

    // Combine, deduplicate, and filter empty strings
    boostValues.push(...newValues);
    boostValues = [...new Set(boostValues)].filter(Boolean);

    // Pass comma-separated result to the next step
    Mesa.output.next(boostValues.join(', '));
  }
}

This step writes the combined keyword list back to the product's Search & Discovery metafield — the same one Shopify's search algorithm reads when ranking results. It targets the shopify--discovery--product_search_boost namespace and queries key, and stores the value as a list of single-line text entries. This runs automatically using the output from the previous step, so no configuration is required. Once this step completes, your product's search boost terms are live and Shopify's Search & Discovery app will reflect the update.