Global Search¶

Global Search is a storefront search for your Shopify store. When a customer searches your store, they see books from your regional provider's catalog — Ingram Content Group® for US stores, Gardners for UK stores — not just the books you have already added to Shopify.

If a customer chooses a book that isn't in your store yet, Emersoft Books creates the product in Shopify on the spot and takes the customer to its product page. The customer can then buy it like any other book, and the order is fulfilled by your provider.

Available on Digital Bookseller / Growth and Omnichannel Pro plans.

Why this matters

A customer who searches your store and doesn't find the book they want is a lost sale. With Global Search, any book your provider can supply can be found — and bought — on your store, without you importing it first.

How it works¶

A customer clicks the search icon or search field on your storefront. The Global Search window opens.
They search by title, author, keywords, or ISBN.
Results show the books you already sell first, followed by other books your provider can supply.
If the customer opens a book that isn't in your store yet, the app creates the product and redirects the customer to the new product page — usually within a few seconds.
The customer adds the book to their cart and checks out. The order is fulfilled by your provider like any other book imported through the app.

Once a book has been created, it stays in your store as a normal Shopify product. The next customer who searches for it sees it as one of your books.

Before you start¶

Your plan — Global Search is included in the Digital Bookseller / Growth and Omnichannel Pro plans.
Online Store — Global Search runs on your Online Store theme, so you need the Online Store sales channel.
Fulfillment set up — books created by Global Search are fulfilled by your provider, so complete your provider's fulfillment setup first: Ingram CDF Lite for US stores, or Gardners Setup & Fulfillment (including Inventory Sync) for UK stores.
Shipping rates — add shipping rates for your provider's fulfillment location (Emersoft Books Fulfillment - Ingram or Emersoft Books Fulfillment - Gardners). Without them, customers can't buy these books at checkout. See First Steps (Ingram) or Prepare Shopify (Gardners).
Import settings — review Apps > Emersoft Books > Settings > Import. Global Search uses several of these settings when it creates a product — see Which Import settings apply. In particular, check Inventory policy: with the default setting, books your provider has no stock of right now show as sold out — see Inventory policy.

Turn on Global Search¶

Global Search is a Shopify app embed — you switch it on in the theme editor.

In Shopify Admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
Click Customize on your active theme.
In the left sidebar, open App embeds.
Turn on Global Search Widget.
Click Save.

From now on, your theme's search icon and search field open Global Search instead of your theme's own search.

App embeds are set per theme

The setting belongs to the theme, not your store. If you publish a different theme, turn Global Search Widget on in that theme too.

Appearance¶

With Global Search Widget selected in App embeds, you can set:

Background color — the background of the search window (white by default)
Text color — the text in the search window (black by default)

Choose colors that match your theme and are easy to read.

If the search window doesn't open¶

Global Search recognizes the search icon and search field in most themes automatically. If your theme uses an unusual search input and Global Search doesn't open from it, enter its CSS selector in Extra search input selector (optional). This adds to the built-in detection — it does not replace it. Your theme developer can tell you the right selector, or contact the Emersoft team for help.

Leave this field blank unless you need it.

Turning it off¶

Turn off Global Search Widget in App embeds and click Save. Your theme's own search comes back straight away. Books that Global Search has already created stay in your store.

What customers see¶

Search starts after three characters. Before the customer types, the window shows a few products from your store.
Your books first. Books you already sell on your Online Store appear first, with your price and a link to your product page.
Then books your provider can supply. Other matching titles follow, showing the provider's list price.
Each result shows the cover, title, author, price, and format (for example, Hardcover).
English-language editions are listed before other languages.
A search returns up to 20 results. Searching by ISBN finds that exact edition.

When a customer opens a book that isn't in your store yet, they see a short "Checking availability…" message while the product is prepared. If the book can't be ordered after all, the customer sees a message that it is currently unavailable and stays on your store.

The search window's messages are shown in English.

Global Search shows books from your provider's catalog

Global Search searches your provider's catalog and shows which of those books you already sell. A product appears as one of your books when its ISBN matches a title in the catalog (the app matches the ISBN in the product's Barcode field) and it is Active on your Online Store.

Products that aren't in your provider's catalog — such as gifts, cards, gift cards, or books without an ISBN — don't appear in search results. Because Global Search replaces your theme's search, customers can't reach your theme's own search results page from the search box.

What happens when a customer chooses a book¶

When a customer opens a book that isn't in your store, Emersoft Books creates a complete Shopify product — the same data as a single import: cover, description, ISBN as SKU and barcode, price, cost, subject tags, and emersoft metafields.

The new product is:

Active and published to your Online Store, plus any other sales channels selected in your Import settings — so the customer can open it straight away
Priced at the provider's list price — no markup is added. You can change the price in Shopify at any time.
Assigned to your provider's fulfillment location (Emersoft Books Fulfillment - Ingram or Emersoft Books Fulfillment - Gardners) with your provider's current stock. The app keeps this stock in sync, as it does for imported books.
Tagged Emersoft Books Global Search, so you can find every book Global Search has created. Its emersoft.import_method metafield is set to jit (just-in-time). See Product Tags & Metafields.
Marked as a pre-order (emersoft.is_preorder) when the book isn't published yet — the same as an import. See Pre-order titles.

Orders for these books are fulfilled by your provider in the same way as any other book imported through the app.

Which Import settings apply¶

Global Search uses your defaults from Apps > Emersoft Books > Settings > Import, with a few exceptions so the customer can always open the book.

Import setting	Used by Global Search?
Publish to sales channels	Yes — Online Store is always added
Product type, Vendor override, Cost discount	Yes
Set compare-at price from list price	Yes
Show format on single-edition products	Yes
Charge tax on products	Yes
Inventory policy	Yes — see below
Product status	No — products are always created Active
Apply provider inventory to products	No — provider stock is always applied
Matching, grouping, and update options	No

Inventory policy¶

Some books your provider can supply have no stock on hand right now — for example, Ingram print-on-demand titles, backorders, and pre-orders. Global Search creates these with a stock count of zero, and the Inventory policy setting decides what happens next:

Deny purchases when out of stock (default) — the product page shows the book as sold out, and the customer can't buy it.
Continue selling when out of stock — the customer can buy the book, and your provider ships it when it becomes available. See Out-of-stock books and backorders (Ingram) or Backorders & Pre-orders (Gardners).

If you want customers to be able to order every book they find, set Inventory policy to Continue selling when out of stock. This setting also applies to catalog imports when Apply provider inventory to products is on.

Exclude books from Global Search¶

To keep certain books out of Global Search, go to Apps > Emersoft Books > Settings > Global Search.

Exclusion	Available for	How it works
Excluded BISAC subjects	Ingram	Hides books with the exact BISAC codes you select. Excluding a broader subject does not exclude its sub-subjects — select each one you want to hide.
Excluded Thema subjects	Gardners	Hides books with the Thema codes you select. Excluding a broader subject also excludes all subjects beneath it.
Excluded ISBNs	Both	Hides specific books. Add ISBNs one at a time, or paste a list with one ISBN per line — hyphens and spaces are removed automatically.

A few things to know:

Subject exclusions only hide books that aren't in your store. If you already sell a book on your Online Store, it stays searchable even when its subject is excluded.
Excluded ISBNs hide a book everywhere in Global Search, including books already in your store.
Exclusions only affect Global Search. They never delete or change products in your store.
To hide a book, use Excluded ISBNs rather than archiving the product. An archived product still appears in Global Search as a book your provider can supply, and customers who open it are told it is unavailable.

Products already in your store¶

Global Search uses the products you already have instead of creating duplicates. This also means it can change some of those products.

How Global Search works with your existing products

Drafts with the same ISBN. If you have a Draft product with the same ISBN (in its barcode or SKU), Global Search finishes and publishes that draft instead of creating a new product. If the draft has no images yet, the app first updates it with catalog data — title, description, price, and cover — replacing those details. Your tags are kept. This can happen as soon as the book appears near the top of a customer's search results. To keep a draft private, add its ISBN to Excluded ISBNs.
Active products that aren't on your Online Store. If a book is Active but only on other channels (for example, Point of Sale), Global Search publishes it to your Online Store and the sales channels in your Import settings when it appears near the top of a customer's search results or a customer opens it.
Books your provider has in stock. When a book you already sell comes up in a search and your provider has it in stock, the app adds your provider's stock to the product at your provider's fulfillment location. Shopify can then send orders for that book to your provider, depending on your fulfillment routing. To decide whether your own stock or your provider ships first, see Flexible fulfillment routing.

When Global Search publishes a draft or an Active product as described above, it also applies the Inventory policy from your Import settings to it.

Temporary drafts in Shopify Admin¶

To open books faster, Global Search prepares the top few results of each search in advance, as Draft products. If no customer opens them, they are deleted automatically, usually within an hour. Books that customers open become Active and stay in your store.

These temporary drafts carry the Emersoft Books Global Search tag too. To see only the books Global Search has created for customers, filter Shopify Admin > Products by that tag and Status: Active.

Don't edit or publish temporary drafts — they may still be deleted.
If other apps or Shopify Flow workflows react when products are created or deleted, they will see these drafts as well.

Your provider¶

Global Search always uses your store's regional provider.

Ingram (US)¶

Results include books Ingram can supply — in stock, print-on-demand, backorder, and pre-order titles.
Prices are Ingram list prices in USD.
Subject exclusions use BISAC codes.
Orders are fulfilled through Ingram CDF Lite.

Gardners (UK)¶

Books you don't sell yet appear only when Gardners reports them as In Stock or Low Stock. Pre-order, Out of Stock, and Unknown titles — including Extended Catalogue (GXC) titles — don't appear as books to order, although you can still import them from the app. Books you already sell on your Online Store appear whatever their Gardners stock status.
Prices are Gardners prices in GBP and are not converted.
Subject exclusions use Thema codes.
Global Search needs Inventory Sync to be active, because new products are assigned to the Emersoft Books Fulfillment - Gardners location. See Prepare Shopify.
Orders are fulfilled through Gardners.

Good to know¶

Product limits. Every book Global Search creates is a Shopify product and counts toward Shopify's product limit. See the note on Shopify product limits in Bulk Import.
Search engines. Books created by Global Search are normal Active products on your Online Store, so search engines can find and index them like your other products.
Long-open searches. If a customer leaves search results open for several minutes before choosing a book, they may be asked to search again.
Need help? If Global Search doesn't open from your theme's search, or you'd like help choosing exclusions or settings, contact the Emersoft team.