Discoverable Collection Items
Constructor continues to make shopper discovery smarter and more intuitive. Our latest update introduces Discoverable Collection Items, a lightweight, API-first way to connect queries → collections → items, ensuring that seasonal or campaign-based products are surfaced at the right time and for the right searches.
What is it?
A new enhancement to the Collection Creation API allows customers to make items within a Collection discoverable for specific search phrases. This means that when a shopper searches for terms like “Sale,” “Holiday Deals,” or “Thanksgiving Sale,” the items from relevant seasonal or promotional collections (e.g., “Black Friday Collection”) can automatically appear in search results with no manual items association or merchandising rules required.
This feature gives merchants a lightweight, API-only way to directly associate search queries with entire collections of items, improving recall and discoverability while reducing manual merchandising overhead.
Note: This functionality is currently available only via the API, with dashboard and UI support coming soon.
Why this matters
Previously, there was no automatic link between seasonal or promotional collections and shopper queries:
- Items in those collections weren’t discoverable by campaign-related terms, since they often lacked explicit query associations or metadata.
- Merchants had to rely on manual rules to approximate this behavior, an inconsistent and time-consuming process, often without good item-level attribution for seasonal relevance.
With Discoverable Collections, Constructor bridges this gap, letting merchants efficiently map search phrases to collections so that the right items appear automatically when shoppers search for relevant terms.
How does it work?
A new optional parameter, discoverable, has been added to the Collection Creation API.
When creating or updating a Collection, you can set discoverable: true and define phrases and match types similar to how redirects are configured.
Each discoverable configuration includes:
match_type (string, default to PHRASE): The matching logic for the phrase.
- "EXACT" – The pattern must exactly match the search query.
- "UNORDERED" – All tokens in the pattern must match the query, but order doesn’t matter.
- "PHRASE" – All tokens must match, but the query may include additional tokens.
- pattern (string, required): The phrase pattern that triggers item discovery.
By default, discoverable is false to preserve existing behavior.
Example Request
Below is a simple example of creating a discoverable Collection that associates its items with “sale” and “Thanksgiving sale” search queries:
curl -X POST https://ac.cnstrc.com/v1/collections \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer/Basic YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
-d '{
"display_name": "Black Friday Test Collection",
"id": "bf25-cnstrc",
"filter_expression": {
"name": "group_id",
"value": "all"
},
"discoverable": true,
"matches": [
{
"pattern": "sale",
"match_type": "PHRASE"
},
{
"pattern": "Thanksgiving sale",
"match_type": "PHRASE"
}
]
}'
In this example, items within the “Black Friday Test Collection” become discoverable whenever shoppers search for “sale” or “Thanksgiving sale.”
What problem does it solve?
The Discoverable Collections Items feature eliminates the need for complex rule management and inconsistent boosting strategies. By connecting queries → collections → items directly, merchants can:
- Automatically surface seasonal or campaign items for relevant search terms.
- Reduce manual merchandising effort while improving accuracy.
- Increase recall and relevance for high-intent seasonal queries.
Availability
The Discoverable Collections Items feature is available today via the Collection Creation API. Dashboard and UI support are coming soon to make discoverability even easier to configure.
For assistance or to learn more about setup best practices, please contact your Customer Success Manager or reach us at support@constructor.io.
