Product Rules give merchants greater control over how Manifest recommends products. You can configure custom recommendation rules to boost or avoid products, recommend specific products, search within a collection, or ask qualifying questions before making recommendations. This ensures the assistant's product suggestions align with your business goals and merchandising strategy.
Why Product Rules Matter
Product Rules let you shape how Manifest responds to keyword-based searches. Whether you want to highlight certain items, avoid specific collections, or strictly show selected products, this feature gives you full flexibility.
This means more accurate, brand-aligned, and goal-driven product recommendations for your buyers.
Types of Product Rules
1. General Product Search
Customize how products appear in search results by boosting or avoiding specific products. You can configure rules by selecting products directly or by using custom instructions.
i. Boost Products
Promote specific products so they appear more prominently when customers search using the configured keywords.
ii. Avoid Products / Collections
Exclude specific products from search results for the configured keywords.
2. Recommend Specific Products
Recommend only the products you select for a specific keyword. When this rule is applied, the assistant ignores all other product suggestions and recommends only the configured products.
3. Search Within a Collection
Restrict product recommendations to a specific collection. When this rule is applied, only products from the selected collection are considered for recommendations.
4. Ask Questions Before Recommendation
Configure a sequence of questions and answer options to collect customer preferences before recommending products.
Based on the customer's responses, you can define recommendation rules using custom instructions. For each combination of answers, you must:
Add the products that can be recommended.
Provide a custom instruction describing when those products should be recommended.
Example
Questions
Have you snowboarded before?
Beginner
Experienced
Riding style
Playful and flexible
Stable and aggressive
Rule
If the customer selects Beginner and Playful and flexible, add Product A and Product B, and specify in the instruction that these products should be recommended for this combination.
The assistant evaluates the customer's responses and recommends the selected products according to the configured instructions.
Boost & Avoid Products – Two Ways to Configure
For both Boost and Avoid product rules, merchants can choose between two configuration methods:
Selecting Products
Manually choose specific products by using the “Add products” option.Add Custom Instruction
Provide a written instruction to guide the system.
Example: “Avoid shampoo products”, “Boost sulfate-free items”, etc.
The assistant will use these instructions to automatically boost or avoid products during search and recommendations.
How to Add a Product Rule
Navigate to the Manifest Dashboard.
Go to Skills.
Open Product Guidance → Settings.
Select the Sales Strategy tab.
Click Custom Recommendation Rules.
Click Add New Rule.
Enter a Rule Name and add up to five keywords under Search Items.
A keyword can be used in only one rule.
If a keyword is already used in another rule, an error message is displayed.
Choose one of the following rule types:
General Product Search
Boost Products – Select products to promote or add a custom instruction.
Avoid Products – Select products to exclude, or add a custom instruction.
When using a Custom Instruction, describe how the assistant should boost or avoid products. You do not need to select products manually; the assistant applies the instruction automatically.
Recommend Specific Products
Select the products that should be recommended exclusively for the configured keywords.
Search Within a Collection
Select the collection from which products should be recommended for the configured keywords.
Ask Questions Before Recommendation
Add one or more questions with answer options.
For each combination of answer options, configure the products to recommend and provide custom instructions that define when those products should be recommended.
Click Save.
You can edit or delete any rule from the Custom Recommendation Rules list.
Verify the Rule
Open your website.
Launch the Manifest Assistant.
Search using one of the configured keywords.
The assistant recommends products according to the configured rule.
If a merchant adds a rule for the keyword “best sellers”, the assistant will follow the Product Rule first—not the “Best Sellers” settings configured in products tab.
FAQs
1) What happens if two rules have the same keyword?
Manifest will notify you about the conflict and ask you to fix it before saving.
2) What is the difference between “Boost Products” and “Recommend Specific Products”?
Boost Products highlights selected items but still allows other relevant products to appear.
Recommend Specific Products shows only the chosen items for that keyword and ignores all other products.
3) Do Product Rules affect all customer queries?
No. They affect only the keywords you add to the rule.
4) What happens if no rule is matched?
Manifest will use the default product search settings and algorithm.
For further assistance or to raise feature requests related to Product Rule, please contact [email protected].