When a shopper asks Arbyn for something ("do you have anything under $50", "what Burton boards do you carry", "I need a gift for my mum"), Arbyn searches your whole catalogue, not a shortlist. This article explains what it does with a shopper's request, and what it will and will not say.
It searches your store, not the first few matches
If a shopper states a budget, a brand, a category, a collection, or asks for something in stock, Arbyn applies that to every product you sell before it ranks anything.
This matters because of what the alternative looks like. If Arbyn ranked first and filtered second, a shopper asking "anything under $200?" would only ever be told about the handful of products that happened to rank highest. A store carrying thirty-nine qualifying items could truthfully answer "I don't see anything." True, and a lost sale. Arbyn narrows first, so an answer about what you carry is an answer about your store.
It never comes back empty-handed
If nothing meets the shopper's request, Arbyn does not stop at "we don't have that."
It says so plainly, then shows the closest products you actually stock and labels why they don't match: "these are over your $200 budget", or "we don't carry that brand, but here are the closest in that category."
Two things it will never do:
Pretend the closest thing is a match. A shopper who asks for a snowboard and is shown candles will always be told those are suggestions, not what they asked for.
Imply your catalogue is empty. A shopper told "we have nothing" about a category you stock simply leaves.
It handles typos, accents and product codes
Typos. "snowbord" finds your snowboards. This only kicks in when the exact spelling matches nothing, so it can never dilute a good result.
Accents. "cafe" and "café" reach the same products, in any of the 21 languages Arbyn speaks.
Product codes. If a shopper types a SKU (the code on their box or receipt), Arbyn looks it up directly in Shopify rather than guessing from the product description.
What it will say about stock and sales
Arbyn reads stock and sale status from your live Shopify data.
If you don't track inventory on a product, Arbyn treats it as available. It will not tell a shopper something is sold out just because there's no number attached to it. If Arbyn genuinely cannot determine a product's stock, it stays quiet about stock rather than guessing either way.
"On sale" means what Shopify means: a compare-at price above the current selling price.
If a shopper has told you what they don't like
When a returning customer has told Arbyn directly that they avoid something (a material, a category, a brand), Arbyn stops leading with those products. It still knows you stock them, so it can say "we do carry these, but you mentioned you avoid wool" rather than pretending they don't exist.
This only applies to preferences a customer stated in their own words. Something Arbyn merely inferred from browsing or past orders will gently affect the order products appear in, and nothing more. Quietly hiding a product from someone based on a guess costs you a sale you would never hear about.
What you don't need to do
Nothing. This works off the product data Shopify already holds: titles, descriptions, tags, product type, vendor, collections, price, compare-at price and inventory. The richer those fields are, the better Arbyn matches, but there is no separate setup, index or import to maintain.