AddSynapse Search & Filter

AddSynapse Search & Filter replaces the default WooCommerce product search with a fast,
hosted live search and AJAX product filters. Indexing and search run on our servers, so
your shop’s database and hosting carry no extra load.

Search

• Live search as you type — image, price and in-stock options, in a compact list or a
  large panel with product cards and category/brand links.
• Typo tolerant — “headphnes” still finds “headphones”; partial words match too.
• Synonyms per store, and search by attributes (color, size…), SKU and barcode.
• No-results report — see what shoppers didn’t find; add a synonym in one click.
• No product disappears — if your catalog exceeds your plan, the most important products
  are indexed and the rest are still found by the standard WordPress search.
• Fail-open — if our service can’t be reached, the normal WordPress search takes over.
• Works with your theme — attaches to its search field and icon automatically, page
  builders included, with CSS selectors as a fallback; or keep your theme’s search look.
• Voice search (optional) and Semantic search (beta) (optional, Pro and Business
  plans: “Related results” only when a search finds nothing).
• Privacy — search history stays in the visitor’s browser; search stats are opt-in.

How the filters work

1. Place the filters — add one AddSynapse Search — Product filter block or widget per
   filter to your shop sidebar, or use a shortcode (see the FAQ). Filters: any product attribute (color,
   size…), category (list or tree), brand, and price (min–max).
2. Shoppers pick values — checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdown or buttons, with counts that
   follow the other choices. Different filters narrow together; on a category page they stay
   within that category.
3. The product grid updates — the plugin finds your theme’s product grid (div-based grids
   like Woodmart or Flatsome too) and shows the filtered products in its place, with no page
   reload; “Clear” brings your theme’s grid back. Prefer a page reload? Switch it in
   Settings → Product filters. The address bar always holds the filters (share, back button).

Limits: filtered results use the plugin’s own product cards (image, title, price, in-stock
options), not your theme’s. If your plan covers only part of your catalog, filters pause and
your theme shows all products.

Language support

Typo tolerance, partial words, synonyms and attributes work in any language. Filler words and
phrases (“I’m looking for…”) are handled in English, Greek and 15 other European languages.

Built-in Greek support: greeklish ↔ Greek (“kreatini” finds “κρεατίνη”) and word forms
(“πρωτεΐνη” also finds “πρωτεΐνης”, “πρωτεΐνες”). Word forms and transliteration are
currently Greek only.

How it works

After you connect, the plugin sends catalog data (title, categories, price, SKU, images —
never customer or order data) to our service through a background queue (Action
Scheduler). Visitor searches go directly to our service with a short-lived token scoped to
your catalog. Details in “External services” below.

Requires a free AddSynapse account

This plugin is a client for a hosted search service; there is no local search engine and
nothing is held back. Click Connect to AddSynapse on the settings page, sign in (or create a
free account) and approve your site — no card, no key to copy. Until you connect, the plugin
sends nothing out, schedules nothing and shows nothing in your store.

The Free plan has no time limit and search is never switched off. It covers a limited number
of products (variations don’t count). Fair-use limits on monthly searches are informational
only — search is never interrupted. Payment problems on a paid plan fall back to the Free plan
limits. The Pro plan can be tried free for 5 days (card required); afterwards the plugin keeps
working on the Free plan. Plans and prices: https://addsynapse.com/product-search.

Requires WooCommerce 8.0 or newer and the PHP mbstring extension.

External Services

This plugin is a client for the hosted AddSynapse search service. AddSynapse is operated by
WebOrange (weborange.gr). The service runs on addsynapse.com hosts; stores
activated before the move may still use the previous weborange.gr hosts (same service, same
operator) until their next token renewal switches them over automatically. Indexing and search run on our servers, so the plugin cannot work without connecting
to the services below. Until you connect to AddSynapse (or enter a license key from an earlier
version), the plugin sends nothing anywhere. Your store’s customer and order data is never
sent. After an administrator clicks “Connect to AddSynapse”, the following is sent (details in
sections 0-2 below):

• to AddSynapse, once, in the address of the page that opens: your site’s address and name and
  the email address of the administrator who clicked (only to pre-fill sign-in or sign-up — your
  account is created by you, on the AddSynapse website);
• to AddSynapse, about every hour: your site’s address, version numbers and product count;
• to the search service: your published product catalog (no customer or order data) and your
  synonyms;

• from your visitors’ browsers to the search service: the search terms and filters they use, and —
  only if you turn on search statistics — anonymous search and click counts (no cookies, no
  visitor identifiers).

• AddSynapse account (section 0): terms https://addsynapse.com/terms, privacy https://addsynapse.com/privacy

• Search service (sections 1 and 2): terms https://search-api.addsynapse.com/terms, privacy
  https://search-api.addsynapse.com/privacy

0. AddSynapse account — app.addsynapse.com and api.addsynapse.com

Your AddSynapse account holds your plan, limits and billing.

• Connect (only when an administrator clicks “Connect to AddSynapse”): app.addsynapse.com
  opens in a new tab with your site’s address and name, the platform (WooCommerce), the plugin
  version and the email address of the administrator who clicked (only to pre-fill sign-in or
  sign-up). Your site first asks api.addsynapse.com for the address of that page. While the tab
  is open, the settings page asks api.addsynapse.com every few seconds whether you approved
  (server to server, with the one-time random request code; only while the request is pending, at most 24 hours). After you
  sign in and approve, your site exchanges a one-time code with api.addsynapse.com (server to
  server) for its site key and a signing secret, which is stored encrypted in your WordPress
  database.
• Plan status (about every hour in the background, when you open the plugin’s settings page,
  and when you click “Refresh status”): a signed request with your site’s address, the plugin,
  WordPress and WooCommerce versions and the number of published products. The response
  (signed, verified by the plugin) contains your plan, its limits, the billing state, links to
  your account, and the addresses of the search service assigned to your site (sections 1-2).
• Disconnect (only when you click it): a signed request so that AddSynapse revokes the keys.

1. AddSynapse Search API — search-api.addsynapse.com

Used by your WordPress site (server to server), authenticated with your license key. Stores
activated before the move may still use the previous address, search-api.weborange.gr (legacy,
same service and operator), until the next token renewal returns the new one.

• Connecting the search service (once, right after you connect to AddSynapse, and again
  only if it has to be repaired): your store’s domain, its AddSynapse site key and a signed
  proof, which the Search API forwards to AddSynapse (api.addsynapse.com) to confirm your site.
  The response contains the license key for the search service. Every later request to this
  API also carries the site key (X-AddSynapse-Site header).
• License activation and token renewal (on activation, then about once every 24 hours):
  your license key and your store’s domain. Every request to this API also carries the
  plugin’s version number (X-AddSynapse-Plugin header). The response contains a short-lived, read-only
  search token and the addresses of the search hosts assigned to your store.
• Catalog indexing (when a product is created, updated, trashed or deleted, during a full
  rebuild you start, and in a nightly background sync): a list of your published, visible
  products — title, categories, brand, description excerpt, price, SKU/barcodes, attributes
  (e.g. color/size), stock status, number of sales and creation date (used only to keep your
  most important products when the catalog is larger than your plan), image URLs and product URL. Deleted or hidden products are
  sent as a list of product IDs to remove.
• Settings and synonyms (when you save settings or edit synonyms): your synonym groups
  and your site’s language code (e.g. “el”), also sent on license activation.
• Statistics (when you open the Stats or Status tab): a request for your store’s search
  statistics and plan usage.
• Suggestions (when you ask for synonym suggestions on the Stats tab): the search term
  you picked.
• Billing portal link (sites with a license key from earlier versions, only when you click
  “Manage subscription & invoices”): a request for a one-time link to your Stripe customer
  portal (see Stripe below).

• Search statistics beacon — optional, off by default; only if you tick it under Settings → Behavior → Search statistics. From the
  visitor’s browser, after each search and result click, sent to the /v1/track endpoint:
  your store ID, the search term, the number of results, and the ID of the product that was
  clicked. When the plugin removed a filler phrase from the search (see “Filler phrases”
  below), the phrase as the visitor typed or spoke it is sent too (at most 200 characters),
  so that searches like “do you have …” that still find nothing can improve the lists. In the
  “Theme’s search look” mode your site’s server sends it, once per search results page. The plugin adds no cookie or visitor identifier to it. As with any web request,
  the visitor’s browser connects from an IP address; the statistics service does not store IP
  addresses or user agents with these events. Switching it off stops collection for pages
  loaded after you save: tabs that were already open, or pages served from a page cache, may
  keep sending until they are reloaded or the cache expires. Your choice is also sent to the
  service when you save the settings (and on activation), and from then on the service
  ignores and does not store events from stores that have it switched off. Statistics
  collected earlier stay in the Stats tab until they expire under the retention period in
  the privacy policy.

• Semantic search (beta) — optional, off by default, Pro and Business plans; only if you
  tick it under Settings → Behavior → Semantic search (beta). No new third party is involved: the setting
  (on/off) is sent with your settings, and while it is on the search service passes the product
  texts it already receives for indexing (title, categories, brand, start of the description) to
  AddSynapse’s own embedding service, run by the same operator on our servers in the EU, to
  compute a “meaning” vector per product. When a visitor’s search finds no
  products, the same search term is also turned into such a vector by that service to look for
  related products (see section 2). Nothing is sent to other companies. Switching it off removes
  these vectors from your search index. Same terms and privacy policy as the search service.

The activation response may assign your store to a different node; any API, search or
statistics address the server returns there is a host on addsynapse.com (or, legacy, weborange.gr),
operated by us under the same terms and privacy policy.

2. AddSynapse search engine — q.addsynapse.com

Used directly by your visitors’ browsers while they search. The address is the one the Search
API assigns to your store on activation and token renewal: q.addsynapse.com, or, for stores
activated before the move, the previous address q.weborange.gr (same service, same
operator) until the next token renewal switches them over automatically. When a visitor types in the
search field or uses a product filter, the search term and the selected filters are sent to
this host together with the short-lived, read-only token, which only allows searching your
own catalog. Nothing else is sent; search history stays in the visitor’s browser
(localStorage) and is never uploaded.

In the “Theme’s search look” mode your site’s server sends this request (same term and
token) instead of the visitor’s browser, and caches results for about a minute.

If Semantic search (beta) is on and a search finds no products, one more request with the
same search term and token is sent to this host to look for related products; the search
engine has the term turned into a meaning vector by AddSynapse’s own embedding service (see
section 1). Nothing else is sent.

If a page comes from a page cache with an expired token, the visitor’s browser asks your own
site for a fresh one (admin-ajax.php, action addsynapse_search_token). That request stays on your
WordPress; your site then renews the token with the Search API as described in section 1.

When your plan covers only part of your catalog, the visitor’s browser also asks your own
site (admin-ajax.php, action addsynapse_search_native) for products of the standard
WordPress search that are not in the smart results. That request stays on your WordPress;
nothing is sent to AddSynapse.

3. Browser speech recognition — voice search (optional, off by default)

Only if you enable Settings → Behavior → Voice search. The plugin itself sends nothing for
this feature, and nothing reaches our servers: it only asks the visitor’s browser to recognize
speech (the browser’s built-in Web Speech API). Audio is captured only after a visitor presses
the microphone button and allows microphone access; the recognized text is then placed in the
search field and searched like typed text (see section 2).

Depending on the browser, the recording may be sent to the browser vendor’s speech service
for recognition: Chrome sends it to Google, Edge to Microsoft, and Safari may use Apple’s
servers or recognize speech on the device. That processing is done by the browser vendor
under its own terms, not by this plugin:

• Google privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• Microsoft privacy statement: https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement
• Apple privacy policy: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/

4. Stripe — billing (only for paid plans)

Payments are handled by Stripe, Inc. The plugin itself never sends any data to Stripe:

• Sites connected to AddSynapse: “Manage / Upgrade on AddSynapse” opens your AddSynapse
  account (app.addsynapse.com), where paid plans are bought and managed through Stripe.
• Sites with a license key from earlier versions: the “Upgrade” / pricing links open our pricing page (https://search-api.addsynapse.com/pricing)
  with your store’s domain; choosing a paid plan there sends you to Stripe Checkout, where
  you enter your email and payment details directly with Stripe.
• “Manage subscription & invoices” redirects you to the Stripe customer portal
  (billing.stripe.com) for your store, to change or cancel your plan and download invoices.

Stripe terms: https://stripe.com/legal/consumer
Stripe privacy policy: https://stripe.com/privacy