FAQ and troubleshooting

Use this page to check common setup, catalog, storefront, and billing problems. If the steps do not resolve the issue, see Still need help?.

Where things live in the app: Sync & Index, Appearance, Search Preview, Semantic Controls (Explore mode), Merchandising Rules, A/B Test, Analytics, Plan & Billing, and Help are all in the left-hand navigation of the VIBE admin.

1ReproduceRecord the exact theme, URL, query, market, language, and device.

2LocateDecide whether the symptom belongs to install, index, ranking, display, or tracking.

3CheckUse the owning admin page and its expected status.

4RetestVerify Preview first when relevant, then the storefront.

5EscalateSend evidence and the exact expected and actual behavior.

Appearance Installation showing theme analysis and storefront setup status.

1. VIBE search isn’t appearing on my storefront

The most common cause is that the app embed has not been turned on in your theme. VIBE installs as a theme app extension; turning the app on in your store does not automatically place it on your live storefront. You enable it from the Theme Editor.

Check:

In the VIBE admin, go through onboarding (or open Appearance) and click the Open Theme Editor button. This deep-links straight to the VIBE app embed in your active theme.
In the Theme Editor, enable the VIBE Search app embed.
Click Save in the Theme Editor, then return to the VIBE admin.
Visit your live storefront and open your store’s search (the search icon, search box, or search drawer in your header).

Still not showing?

Confirm the embed is on. If the app embed toggle is off, VIBE will not load on the storefront at all. Re-open the Theme Editor and verify it is enabled and saved.
Check the right theme. Make sure you enabled the embed on your published/active theme, not a draft.
Hard refresh. Themes and the storefront are cached. Reload the storefront page (a hard refresh clears cached assets).
Confirm your catalog is indexed. If no products have been synced yet, search will open but find nothing. See No products are being indexed.

2. I click the search icon and the old (native) search still opens

When VIBE runs in overlay mode, it watches for clicks and focus on your theme’s search controls (the search icon, search links pointing to /search, search modals/drawers, predictive-search elements, and search input fields) and opens the VIBE overlay instead. If you still see your theme’s original search, it usually means one of the following.

Check:

Verify the app embed is enabled and saved (see Question 1). The overlay only intercepts search when the embed is active on the published theme.
Hard refresh the storefront to clear any cached version of the page that loaded before you enabled the embed.
Check your search-mode setting in Appearance. VIBE can run as an overlay (a full-screen VIBE search experience) or in native mode (results injected into your theme’s own search UI). The behavior you see depends on this setting.
Custom or heavily modified themes: if your theme uses unusual markup for its search trigger, VIBE may not recognize it automatically. Open Appearance and confirm the detected search selectors look correct for your theme, then re-test. See Theme compatibility.

The native search can appear briefly before the VIBE overlay opens.

3. No products are being indexed, or products are missing from results

VIBE returns only products that have been synced and indexed. Check the following conditions when a product is missing.

Run a full sync:

Go to Sync & Index.
Click Run full sync and wait for the green Up to date badge. The progress bar shows how many products have been processed.
Re-test your search on the storefront.

VIBE excludes a product when any of these conditions apply:

The product’s status is not Active (drafts and archived products are skipped).
The product is not published (has no published date).
The product is not published to the Online Store sales channel.
The product has the seo.hidden flag set (Shopify’s “hidden from search engines” metafield), with a value of 1 or true.
The product matches one of your Exclusion rules.

Check your Exclusion rules:

Go to Sync & Index and open the Exclude from Search section.
Review the Active Rules list. Products can be excluded by product, by collection, or by tag: a product is hidden if it matches any active rule.
To bring an excluded product back, click Remove on the relevant rule, then run a full sync again.

A recently changed product is not showing. Wait briefly for the automatic update. If the product still does not appear, run a full sync.

No product limit. VIBE indexes your full catalog on every plan. There is no per-plan cap on how many products can be indexed.

4. Search returns “No results” for queries that should match

An empty result can be caused by the query, product visibility, indexing, or active filters.

Check:

Confirm the catalog is indexed. Go to Sync & Index and check that products are indexed and the status is Up to date. If nothing is indexed, run a full sync.
Check that the product isn’t excluded or unpublished. See Question 3: a product that’s a draft, unpublished, hidden, or excluded will never appear, no matter the query.
Try a less specific query. VIBE combines keyword matching with semantic (meaning-based) matching, so natural-language phrases usually work. If a very specific or long query returns nothing, try fewer, simpler words.
Check active filters. If a price range, vendor, type, or availability filter is applied, results are narrowed to match. Clear the filters and search again.
Use Search Preview to compare. Open Search Preview in the admin and run the same query. If it returns results there but not on the storefront, the issue is storefront/theme-side; if it’s empty in both, the issue is indexing or the query itself.

Reaching the included monthly session allowance does not produce empty results. Check indexing, exclusions, filters, and the query first.

If the semantic service is unavailable, VIBE temporarily uses keyword matching.

5. How is VIBE search different from Shopify’s built-in search?

Shopify’s native storefront search is primarily keyword matching against product fields. VIBE adds semantic (meaning-based) search on top of keyword matching, a hybrid approach.

VIBE also supports:

Shoppers can search in natural language (for example, “something warm for winter” or “cozy autumn jacket”) and get relevant products even when those exact words don’t appear in the product title or description.
VIBE understands related concepts and intent, not just literal word matches.
Autocomplete, Explore controls, Merchandising rules, A/B testing, and Analytics, depending on the plan.

You can measure the difference yourself using the built-in A/B Test (see Question 7).

What is the difference between VIBE cards and native theme cards?

VIBE cards are product-card components rendered and styled by VIBE. Native theme cards use the current Shopify theme’s verified product-card markup and CSS.

The card choice changes presentation, not VIBE ranking:

VIBE’s search box uses the VIBE overlay and VIBE cards.
VIBE’s search box with your theme’s cards uses the VIBE overlay and theme-rendered product tiles.
Your theme’s search box preserves the theme’s predictive-search interface while VIBE supplies ranked results.
The VIBE full search page can use either VIBE cards or verified theme cards.

If a theme card is unavailable for a product on a VIBE-rendered surface, VIBE can use its own card for that product so the result remains visible. Read Product cards and search surfaces for the full rendering and fallback flow.

6. I hit a usage or session limit

VIBE measures monthly sessions for billing. A session is a distinct shopper browsing session that includes search or Explore activity. Searches, clicks, and cart actions inside the same active session do not each create a new billable session.

Usage rules:

At 80%: VIBE records a usage warning so the store can review its plan before reaching the included allowance.
Starter, Growth, and Pro overage: Search continues after the included session allowance. Additional usage is billed at $5 per 1,000 sessions under the plan’s Shopify-approved usage terms.
Enterprise: Usage terms are handled according to the Enterprise subscription. Review Plan and billing or contact support for the terms attached to your store.
Per-shopper rate protection: A short request limit protects search from unusually large bursts from one shopper. If triggered, additional requests are briefly throttled and normal search resumes automatically.

Check:

Go to Plan and billing.
Compare monthly sessions with the allowance included in your current plan.
Review the overage terms shown for your subscription.
Upgrade if you need a larger included allowance or additional features.
If the displayed usage does not look correct, email support@coi.se with your store domain and a screenshot of the usage meter.

The current plan configuration is:

Plan	Included monthly sessions	Standard overage
Starter	10,000	$5 per 1,000 sessions
Growth	50,000	$5 per 1,000 sessions
Pro	200,000	$5 per 1,000 sessions
Enterprise	200,000	Custom terms

7. How does the A/B test control group work?

The A/B Test compares VIBE with Shopify native search on the same storefront traffic.

How shoppers are assigned:

Each shopper is given an anonymous session and assigned deterministically to one of two groups for the duration of an active test, so an individual shopper has a consistent experience.
Roughly half of shoppers see VIBE search, and roughly half are placed in the control group.

What the control group experiences:

Control-group shoppers see your native Shopify search: VIBE’s search UI, overlay, and Semantic Controls are not shown to them.
VIBE still quietly records anonymous attribution events for the control group (what they searched, which result they clicked, and cart adds) so the test can be measured fairly on both sides.

How and when the test ends:

The test ends automatically when it collects 4,000 searches (it always runs at least 7 days), or at 14 days, whichever comes first. When it ends, VIBE returns all traffic to VIBE Search, saves a permanent results snapshot, and emails you a summary. After a test you can run the next one in 90 days. You can also stop the test early at any time.

While a test is active, it is expected that some shoppers (the control group) see the original Shopify search instead of VIBE. This is by design, not a bug.
To preview VIBE yourself regardless of group assignment, use the in-admin Search Preview, or end the A/B test to show VIBE to all shoppers.
Read results on the A/B Test page to compare the two groups.

8. Which themes are supported?

VIBE installs as a theme app extension, so it works with themes that support app embeds and app blocks (Online Store 2.0 themes). It ships two parts:

VIBE Search (app embed): Loads VIBE across the storefront and powers the search experience (the overlay or native injection, autocomplete, etc.). This is the part you enable in Question 1.
VIBE Search Page (app block): An optional block for your store’s dedicated search results page.

For the search results page, VIBE analyzes your active search template and recommends how to integrate:

Open Appearance in the VIBE admin.
VIBE checks your active search template and tells you whether the recommended integration is the VIBE Search Page app block or an embed-based replacement, and whether the block is already present.
If the recommendation is the app block, open the search template in the Theme Editor and add the VIBE Search Page app block where you want results to appear, then Save.
Return to Appearance and use the check action to confirm the block was detected on the active search template.

If your theme is heavily customized: VIBE detects the theme’s search triggers and result containers. For custom themes, confirm the detected selectors in Appearance and test again. If the problem occurs only on the dedicated results page, check whether the template uses the app block or embed replacement.

Tip: Always enable and test on your published theme (or a copy you intend to publish). Changes saved on a draft theme won’t affect the live storefront until that theme is published.

9. Does VIBE support multiple languages?

VIBE can read the active Shopify storefront locale and apply locale-specific widget text when translations are configured. Multilingual storefront search is available on Growth, Pro, and Enterprise.

What is included today:

The VIBE admin is available in English.
The storefront widget includes English interface text by default.
Additional storefront interface languages require matching translations for the widget text.

If storefront search text appears in the wrong language:

Confirm the shopper selected the expected language through Shopify’s language or market selector.
Confirm multilingual storefront search is included in your plan.
Confirm translations exist for the active locale.
Email support@coi.se if you need help checking the locale configuration.

10. A product was updated/deleted in Shopify but search is out of date

VIBE keeps the search index in sync with Shopify automatically: when you create, update, or delete a product, or change its publish status, the index is updated shortly afterward.

Check:

Wait briefly after saving the product in Shopify.
Hard refresh the storefront to clear any cached search results.
Force a full re-sync. If a change still isn’t reflected after a minute or two, go to Sync & Index and click Run full sync to rebuild the index from your current catalog.
Check that the change didn’t exclude the product. Setting a product to draft, unpublishing it, removing it from the Online Store channel, or hiding it from search will (correctly) remove it from VIBE results. See Question 3.

11. Do shoppers need to accept cookies for VIBE to work?

VIBE does not set cookies on your storefront, and it does not store customer-identifiable search data. To measure usage and analytics, it uses an anonymous session identifier kept only in the browser’s sessionStorage. The session lasts up to 30 minutes of activity and is not tied to a customer’s identity.

There is nothing for the shopper to accept for search to work. If you use Google Tag Manager and have enabled GTM events in VIBE, anonymous search events can also be pushed to your data layer; this is optional and only happens when you turn it on.

For privacy, data-processing, or data-residency questions, email support@coi.se for the current VIBE privacy and sub-processor information.

Still need help?

Include this information in your support request:

Open Search Preview and Sync & Index and note what you see (indexed product count, last sync status, any error banners).
Note the storefront URL and the search query that’s behaving unexpectedly.
Email support@coi.se or use the contact options on the in-app Help page.