Bring back search synonyms on your Shopify store

Around September 16, 2026, Shopify retired the Synonyms feature in its free Search and Discovery app. Synonym Sync makes "couch" find your sofas again, in the search results page and in the search dropdown, on every plan.

Synonym Sync is in testing and coming to the Shopify App Store.

What changed

The replacement for synonyms is "semantic understanding" (semantic search). It only runs on the Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, only for stores with fewer than 200,000 products, and it never applies to predictive search, the dropdown that appears while a customer types. That means stores on the Basic plan, and the search dropdown on every store, lost synonym support.

Read the full guide to the change and your options.

How it works

You enter groups of words that mean the same thing, for example:

Synonym Sync tags every matching product with the other words in the group, using tags that start with _syn-. Shopify search already searches product tags, so a customer who types "couch" finds the products you called sofas. This works in the search results page and in the predictive search dropdown.

Features

• Every plan. Works on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus.
• Search page and dropdown. Also works for headless storefronts that use the Storefront API.
• Typo tolerance stays on. The app does not rewrite what the customer types, so Shopify's own search behavior is unchanged.
• No theme code. Nothing to paste into your theme.
• Stays in sync. New and edited products are updated automatically.
• Import your old list. Paste your previous synonyms, one group per line.
• Clean uninstall. A "Remove all synonym tags" button takes every _syn- tag off your products.

Tested where it matters

Tag-based matching was verified on the theme search page, the theme search dropdown, Storefront API search and Storefront API predictive search.

How long changes take

The app tags products within seconds. Shopify then has to reindex each product before search sees the change, which can take up to about 90 minutes.

Plans

• Free: up to 5 synonym groups.
• Paid: unlimited synonym groups.

Pricing will be listed on the Shopify App Store.

Questions

Email support@synonymsync.com or see the support page.