Ecommerce search and merchandising
Asked as “ecommerce search and merchandising platform”, and as “onsite product search engine for an online store”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B software company. 51 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, six models each. Added to the September 2026 Edition; its answers are read by the distilled judge (ai-indexes-judge-qwen3-14b), not the claude-opus-5 judge of the earlier categories: how the two compare.
Standing · first-choice share
25%
Contested · Doofinder 12%
25Algolia12Doofinder12Searchanise51others
25% of first choices, contested.
The standing
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all six models, for a mid-market B2B software company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrantSince September 2026
07
Bloomreach Discovery2%35%43criticized challengernewNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 2% now.
Bloomreach Discovery2%35%43criticized challengernewNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 2% now.Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
The floor is 12 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. How the floor is measured
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
Recommended versus criticized
Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.
Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
0607
08
09
10E11
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01Algolia25%
Algolia25%02Doofinder12%
Doofinder12%03Klevu10%
Klevu10%04Searchspring8%
Searchspring8%05Coveo6%
Coveo6%06Clerk.io2%
Clerk.io2%07Bloomreach Discovery2%
Bloomreach Discovery2%08Luigi's Box2%
Luigi's Box2%09Constructor0%
Constructor0%10Nosto0%
Nosto0%11Elasticsearch0%
What they warned about
A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Bloomreach Discovery35%
15 of 43 labels negative · 9 of 6 models · 2 hard negative
“enterprise-focused, custom pricing almost always $1,000+/month” DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt
Algolia19%
12 of 63 labels negative · 7 of 6 models · 2 hard negative
“Be terrified of consumption-based pricing (Algolia and Coveo both have "cliff" pricing models that blow up as you grow).” DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt
Klevu16%
7 of 43 labels negative · 7 of 6 models
“Klevu's G2 review sample is very small, so individual complaints—including one about renewal terms—aren't enough to establish a general pattern” GPT-6 Luna, negative prompt
Searchspring24%
8 of 34 labels negative · 6 of 6 models · 3 hard negative
“**Searchspring (now part of Athos Commerce)**: - **Red flags**: Long onboarding (4+ weeks, sometimes billable during setup).” Grok 4.20, negative prompt
What they cite
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: fourteen of the six in this edition.
Sites the answers cite
79 of 84 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 14 of 6 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 1184 links across 278 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.
vendor site · Guideflow47 answers · 71 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Clerk38 answers · 60 citations · 12 models
37 answers · 39 citations · 10 models
34 answers · 34 citations · 10 models
28 answers · 28 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Zoovu25 answers · 25 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Ringly.io24 answers · 29 citations · 10 models
23 answers · 29 citations · 9 models
21 answers · 42 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Algolia21 answers · 35 citations · 9 models
17 answers · 18 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Constructor16 answers · 17 citations · 9 models
Pages the answers cite
The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.
41 answers · 11 models
37 answers · 10 models
34 answers · 10 models
25 answers · 10 models
23 answers · 10 models
23 answers · 11 models
21 answers · 9 models
19 answers · 8 models
18 answers · 9 models
14 answers · 9 models
Search against answers
Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best ecommerce search and merchandising platform”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
| Company and products | Share | Own site cited | Name searches, Google | AI search demand, est. | Organic visits | Paid search a month, est. | Google ads, last 30 days | Best Google position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Algolia algolia.com | 25% | 179 | 9,900 | 276 | 72,991 | $2,774 | 120 | |
| Doofinder doofinder.com | 12% | 80 | 480 | 4 | 32,788 | 11 | ||
| Searchanise searchanise.io | 12% | 42 | 210 | 3 | 625 | |||
| Klevu klevu.com | 10% | 97 | 320 | 4 | 127 | |||
| Searchspring searchspring.com | 8% | 83 | 720 | 8 | 275 | |||
| Hawksearch hawksearch.com | 8% | 18 | ||||||
| Coveo coveo.com | 6% | 101 | 2,900 | 149 | 19,503 | $5 | 43 | 1 |
| Shopify shopify.com Shopify Plus with B2B Suite 2%, Shopify Search & Discovery 2%, Shopify 2% | 6% | 314 | 1,000,000 | 38,067 | 3,486,997 | $3,351 | 110 | |
| BigCommerce bigcommerce.com BigCommerce B2B Edition 2%, BigCommerce 2% | 4% | 180 | 9,900 | 989 | 655,124 | $1,225 | 115 | |
| Clerk clerk.io Clerk.io 2%, Clerk 0% | 2% | 28 | 110,000 | 59,082 | 1,155 | 0 | 2 |
Google's top ten for the one searches hold 8 sites; 2 of them are among the sites the models cited here (clerk.io, zoovu.com). The first result for “best ecommerce search and merchandising platform” is coveo.com.
How they answered
Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.ShowHide
How they answered
Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHideModelDirect“What is the best ecommerce search and merchandising platform for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which onsite product search engine for an online store would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top ecommerce search and merchandising platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best ecommerce search and merchandising platform for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating an ecommerce search and merchandising platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which ecommerce search and merchandising platforms should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Opus 5no first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Claude Opus 4.8no first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
GPT-6 Astrano first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
GPT-5.6 Solno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.1 Prono first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Perplexity Sonar Prono first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceno first choicenothing named
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against
The record
One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Zero rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
| Prompt | Model | Version string | Time (UTC) | Searched | Sources | Latency |
|---|
Normalization in this category
Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.
ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
Bloomreach read as Bloomreach Discovery
Bloomreach (Bloomreach Discovery) read as Bloomreach Discovery
Shopify's Native Search & Discovery App read as Shopify Search & Discovery
Unresolved, counted raw
Adobe Commerce (Magento) native search
Athos Commerce – Searchspring + Klevu + Intelligent Reach
Attraqt
Boost AI Search & Filtering
Built-in Shopify/Storefront search
FACT-Finder
Intelligent Reach
Recombee
Relevanz
Salesforce
Salesforce B2C Commerce (SFCC) native search
Shopify native Search & Discovery
Shopify's Default Search Engine
Vue.ai
legacy SAP Hybris (SAP Commerce Cloud) default search
native Shopify
older IBM WebSphere (HCL Commerce) search modules
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.