Personalization tailors search results for each website visitor based on their previous behavior. Gathering the behavioral data helps determine the user intent and align it with what the user is likely seeking.

Personalization offers individual results based on the user’s past searches, helping them discover products and services aligned with their preferences.

For instance, if a user clicks on men’s clothing products, subsequent searches will prioritize the display of men’s clothing in the search results. Another example where you could apply personalization would be news articles: if the user is more interested in local news, they will see them in the top of the feed.

Overall, Personalization enhances the visitor’s experience, reducing the need for users to refine their search queries to find the desired information. It is useful in e-commerce as well as content heavy websites such as media platforms.

You can test personalization after setting it up with the following steps:

1. Visit your search page or widget and search with a keyword
2. Click a search result tagged with the custom field you’ve designated for personalization
3. Open your web browser’s Developer Tools by right-clicking on the webpage and selecting Inspect, or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I (on Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Option+I (on macOS)
4. Switch to the Application tab, locate the addsearchUserToken cookie, and copy its value
5. Paste the token into the Preview personalized results for a specific user field in the dashboard to view personalized results on the right

In Shopify, personalization does not require separate implementation; it is enabled by default and relies on the platform’s cookie settings located in Preferences page under Online Store. Please note that the extent of personalization depends on your store’s privacy settings and whether the customer has given consent for cookie usage.