Have you ever searched for “black running shoes” on an eCommerce site and ended up seeing formal shoes, slippers, or unrelated products? You're not alone — and it's not just a technical glitch.

At Spurtcommerce, we’ve spent years working with marketplace platforms and understanding the real reason behind search failures. The truth is simple: poor product data.

Let’s break it down. 

Why Product Search Fails

Search failures happen not because search engines are broken — but because they’re only as smart as the data they’re given. Here are the most common reasons:

• Inconsistent or incomplete product listings: Sellers often skip important fields or provide vague titles and descriptions.
• Mismatched language: Buyers search for "trainers", while sellers write "athletic shoes" — the system sees no match.
• Wrong tags and categories: When a product is misclassified, it breaks the entire filtering system.
• No handling of synonyms, typos, or regional terms: Most search engines struggle with "colour" vs "color", or misspellings like “nikey” for Nike.

What Can Fix It

At Spurtcommerce, we believe the fix doesn’t start with the search bar — it starts with the seller panel.

Here’s what we’ve built into our platform (and recommend to every marketplace):

• Smart Back-Office Validation: Our admin tools can run basic QC checks to catch empty fields, duplicate titles, and inconsistent tagging before listings go live.
• AI-Assisted Product Entry (Coming Soon): We’re working on AI tools that suggest improved titles, categories, and tags to sellers while listing their products.
• Encouraging Standard Naming Formats: A guided product listing flow helps maintain consistent naming, boosting both internal search and Google SEO visibility.

The Impact

In short, good search starts with good data. And fixing it at the source, during product listing, is the most scalable solution.

If you're building or running a marketplace and struggling with product discovery issues, talk to us at Spurtcommerce. We’ve built our headless commerce engine to solve exactly these real-world problems — from data quality to advanced search.