Troubleshoot Search

Each section below starts from what you see on your storefront, then lists the causes in the order to check them. The install steps themselves are in Install Search on Shopify.

Suggestions don’t show under the search field

You type in your theme’s search field and no Dialog product suggestions appear. Check, in order:

The Dialog app embed is off. Search autocomplete runs inside the Dialog AI Modal app embed: with the embed off, nothing loads. In the theme editor, open App embeds, turn on Dialog AI Modal and save.
Autocomplete is unticked. It is off by default on every theme. In the same Dialog AI Modal embed, tick Enable Dialog search autocomplete, then save.
Dialog doesn’t find your search form. Dialog attaches to every form that submits to your store’s search page (/search, or its translated path) and contains a search input named q. A theme that builds its search differently (a custom form action, an input without name="q", a search driven only by JavaScript) isn’t detected. Set Search form CSS selector (optional) in the Dialog AI Modal embed to point at your search form or at an element around it, for example #header-search or form.search-form. To find it, right-click your search field, choose Inspect, and look for the <form> around the input. With a selector, an input of type search or text without a name is accepted too. An invalid selector is ignored: your native search keeps working, without suggestions.
You’re testing from the search results page. On /search, the search form inside the page itself gets no suggestions on purpose: the results are already listed under it. The search field in your header keeps its suggestions. Test from your home page or a product page.

How the suggestions open depends on the Search suggestions style setting of the embed: with Dialog search overlay (the default), a search layer opens over the page as soon as the field gets focus; with Panel under the theme’s input, suggestions open under your field as you type.

The results page still shows your theme’s results

You submit a query and /search shows your theme’s own product grid instead of Dialog’s. Check, in order:

The Dialog search results block isn’t on the search template. The block exists only on the search template. In the theme editor, use the template selector (top bar) to open Search, then Add section (or Add block inside the results section) and pick Dialog search results. If the block is already there, make sure it isn’t hidden (the eye icon next to its name), then save.
Your search template isn’t a JSON template. Shopify only lets you add app blocks to JSON templates (Online Store 2.0). If your theme still renders its search page from a Liquid template, Dialog search results never appears on the Search template. To check, open Online Store → Themes → … → Edit code and look under Templates: search.json means app blocks work there; a search.liquid alone means they don’t. Ask your theme developer to move the search page to a JSON template, or switch to an Online Store 2.0 theme.
The block can’t load. When Dialog can’t start on the page, the block steps aside and leaves your theme’s results visible, so shoppers always get results. The block reads your store’s Dialog key, which the Dialog app sets when you install it: make sure the Dialog Shopify app is installed and connected.

No search bar in the header

Your theme has no search field in its header, and Dialog search bar doesn’t appear in the header’s Add block list.

The header section doesn’t accept app blocks. Shopify only offers app blocks in sections whose code declares them, and many theme headers don’t. It’s a theme limitation, not a Dialog setting. Your options:

Your theme has a search field elsewhere (a drawer, a menu, a search page link): enable autocomplete on it instead of adding a bar.
Place the bar right under the header: add Dialog search bar to a section that accepts app blocks (many themes ship an Apps section for this). With Display set to Search icon, it stays compact.
Add app block support to the header: ask your theme developer to declare @app blocks in the header section’s schema and render them. Dialog search bar then shows up in the header’s Add block list.

A product is missing from the results

Search only returns products a shopper can buy right now. A product is left out of suggestions and results when one of these holds:

Cause	How to check in your Shopify admin	Fix
Not active	The product’s Status is Draft or Archived.	Set it to Active.
Not published on your online store	The product isn’t available on the Online Store sales channel.	Publish it to Online Store.
No variant for sale	Every variant tracks inventory, is at 0 or below, and doesn’t Continue selling when out of stock.	Restock a variant, or allow selling when out of stock.
Not synced yet	The product was just created or changed.	See below.

A variant counts as for sale when it has stock, when its inventory isn’t tracked, or when it continues selling when out of stock.

Sync. Dialog keeps your catalog in sync on its own: the Dialog app imports it at install, then Shopify notifies Dialog each time a product changes. A stock change alone doesn’t always reach Search right away. If a product that meets the three conditions above is still missing, open it in your Shopify admin, edit it and save: Shopify sends the update to Dialog again.

Still stuck?

Gather your store URL, the symptom, your theme’s name and, for a missing product, its URL, then see Before you contact support.

Search overview: what Search does and the beta terms.
Install Search on Shopify: the three install steps of the Setup checklist and their settings.
Verify your install: end-to-end install checks.