This article has been updated for the AI Search released in 2026. The content doesn't document the previous version of the popularity feature.
Understanding the Search Popularity Boost in EvolutionX
Introduction
The Search Popularity Boost feature lets you control how much a product's popularity influences its position in search results. Popularity is measured as the number of times an item is added to a cart in a month, counted by cart line rather than by quantity. The higher the score, the more popular the item.
How Does Popularity Boost Work?
Popularity boost works as an amplifier on top of search relevance — it does not replace it. A product must already be a good match for the customer's search before its popularity can help it rank higher. If a customer searches for "red pens," the most popular red pens will appear ahead of less popular ones, but a popular product that doesn't match the search term won't be surfaced regardless of its score.
This is an important distinction: popularity tips the balance between products that are already similar matches. It won't push an irrelevant product past a relevant one.
Product Content Quality and Search Relevance
Before adjusting the popularity boost, it's worth understanding the role product content plays in search ranking — because popularity can only amplify relevance that is already there.
When a customer searches for a term, EvolutionX scores every product by how well its content matches that term. This relevance score is the foundation of ranking. Popularity then acts as a multiplier on top of that score — a popular product that is a strong match will rank highly, but a popular product with poor content may still rank poorly because there is little relevance for popularity to amplify.
If a product isn't appearing where you'd expect it to for a relevant search, the most common cause is content quality, not popularity. The fields that matter most are:
Product Name — the single most influential field. It should clearly describe what the product is using the terms a customer would naturally search for. Vague or truncated titles are the most common cause of poor search relevance.
Keywords — a dedicated field specifically for search. Use it to add alternative names, abbreviations, trade names, and industry-specific terms your customers use that may not appear naturally in the title or description. A product with a strong title but missing keywords can still be invisible for searches that use different terminology. See Adding & Importing Keywords for how to add these manually or in bulk.
Category, Brand, Attributes and specifications — structured data such as category, brand, dimensions, compatibility, and material type helps match searches that include specific technical terms.
Part numbers and model codes — customers often search by manufacturer part number. If these are missing or incorrect, those searches won't find the product.
Setting the Popularity Boost
The boost slider is in Admin → Settings → Product Search → Popularity Boost. It runs from 0.0 to 1.0.
A good starting point for most stores is 0.4–0.5. If popular products aren't surfacing strongly enough, increase the value and test gradually.
Slider Value | Effect |
No Popularity | No effect — ranking is based entirely on search relevance. |
Low | Light nudge — popular products edge ahead only within very tight relevance groups. Up to a x1.6 multiplier. |
Moderate | Moderate boost — popularity can overcome a small relevance gap between similar products. Up to a x2.2 multiplier. |
Strong (Recommended) | Strong boost — popular products will beat others even if slightly weaker text matches. Up to a x2.8 multiplier. |
Agressive or Maximum | Agressive boost — popularity strongly influences ranking among all products that match the search. Up to a x3.4 multiplier or x4.0 maximum multiplier respectibly. |
How Popularity Scores Are Calculated
EvolutionX automatically calculates a popularity score weekly for all items, based on cart activity over the previous month. The score counts how many times an item appears on a cart line — not the total quantity added.
For shared catalogs, the score is averaged across all stores using that catalog, so it reflects combined popularity rather than activity from a single store.
Setting Your Own Popularity Score
You can import your own popularity scores, which will override the automatically calculated weekly value. To import: Admin → Products → Import.
When setting custom values, keep in mind the effect is relative to other products in the catalog:
If basing the value on your own sales data, use the number of times the item appears on an order line over a month of customer sales.
If you simply want to give a product a strong boost, a value of 300 is a reasonable starting point to experiment with. Values in the 500–600 range represent a top-performing product in a typical catalog.
Remember that a popularity score only benefits a product among others that match the same search — it won't make an irrelevant product appear in unrelated results.
Testing the Popularity Boost
Open a new incognito browser session for each search test — results are cached per session.
A straightforward way to verify the feature: run a search with the slider at 0.0 and note the order of results, then increase the slider and search again in a fresh incognito session. Products with higher popularity scores should move up relative to similarly relevant but less popular products.
Using features like product priority to hard-set search result order is not recommended — it tends to cause more issues than it solves. Popularity boost is a better approach because relevance continues to do its job while popular products gain a meaningful, proportional advantage.
Related Articles on Search
There are many tools to influence product search which you can read about in our docs:
FAQ — Frequently Asked Questions
How can I rank the top items to appear in search?
Popularity boost isn't designed for pinning specific items — it's designed to surface popular products ahead of similar-but-less-popular ones within normal search results. If a customer searches "blue pen," more popular blue pens should rank higher than others that match on the same terms.
To pin specific items above search results, use the marketing module to set up a merchandising group and container based on the searched keywords, then add a merchandising items widget to your search results layout.