How Search Works

Overview

Marketplace search is the fastest way for a shopper to jump to the right inventory. The search bar lives in your site navigation and returns results as the shopper types.

Search, filters, and infinite scroll run on the same inventory index and stay in sync through the URL.

What shoppers see

Real-time dropdown results

As a shopper types, results appear in a dropdown in real time. Results refresh on every keystroke.

The dropdown includes two result types:

• Category links that open a pre-filtered Search Results Page (SRP)
• Individual vehicle results that open a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP)

Device-specific result count

The dropdown returns a smaller set of results on mobile and a larger set on desktop and tablet:

• Mobile: 4 results
• Desktop and tablet: 6 results

What shoppers can search for

Search accepts natural language and identifiers across inventory fields, including:

• Make (Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet, and synonyms such as Chevy)
• Make and model (Toyota Camry)
• Year (2022, 2023 Toyota)
• Body type (SUV, sedan, pickup)
• Trim level (SE, Limited)
• Exterior color (red, midnight black)
• Fuel type (hybrid, electric, diesel)
• Drivetrain (AWD, 4x4)
• VIN (full or partial)
• Stock number

Typo tolerance and synonyms

Marketplace search is powered by Meilisearch, which provides typo tolerance for general text searches.

Rules that matter:

• Typo tolerance is enabled for natural language queries (make, model, trim, keywords).
• Typo tolerance is disabled for VINs and stock numbers.

Synonyms are supported at the index level.

Examples:

• Chevy maps to Chevrolet
• old maps to used

Ranking and relevance

Meilisearch ranks results using a fixed ranking pipeline. Search results are ordered using:

1. Words
2. Typo
3. Proximity
4. Attribute
5. Sort
6. Exactness

This favors exact matches, tight phrase matches, and matches in high-signal fields such as make and model.

Model deduplication in the dropdown

The dropdown applies model-level deduplication so it does not fill with many near-identical variants of the same model. The dropdown shows one representative result per model.

Exact-match handling for VIN and stock number

When a query matches exactly on VIN or stock number, the dropdown switches to identifier-focused results.

Outcomes:

• Single match: the dropdown shows that vehicle with the matched identifier highlighted, and selecting it opens the VDP.
• Multiple matches: the dropdown shows each matching vehicle with the identifier highlighted.

Highlighting

The matched portion of each result is highlighted using your site’s primary theme color. This improves scanability and makes it clear why a result matched.

Performance and caching

Search requests are cached at Cloudflare’s edge for one hour.

Key behaviors:

• Popular searches are served from cache near the shopper.
• Cache entries are isolated per dealer index.
• Cache is invalidated automatically when inventory is updated so shoppers see current results.