The Cost of No-Result Searches: What 4,000 Stores Reveal

A customer types exactly what they want into the search bar, but nothing comes back. Many online stores might treat this as a rare edge case. The data says otherwise.

We looked at data from 4,000 online stores across 15 e-commerce verticals. This is what showed up.

How often searches actually fail

On average, 6.3% of searches return no results, even on stores using advanced site search. Stores running unoptimized search engines likely see rates higher than that.

Searches without results also vary by vertical. Pets sees the highest no-result rate at 9.1%, followed by Pharma & Medical at 8.9% and Industry Supplies at 8.7%. Luxury Goods sits lowest at 4.2%.

The Pets number has a clear explanation behind it. Customers search by breed, size, or product type, and formatting trips up a lot of search engines that can’t handle the variation. A search for ‘large cat carrier—gray’ should return the same result whether someone types ‘largecatcarrier gray’ or ‘big cat carrier grey.’

Why no-result searches happen

Two things cause a search to come back empty, and only one of them is actually about the product.

The first is a limitation of the search itself. A customer might use a different product name than what’s in the catalog, type in slang or a regional term, make a typo, drop a diacritic, search in plural instead of singular, or format a product code differently than the store does internally.

So even if the product is actually there, the search can’t connect the query to the item in your catalog.

The second is more straightforward: the product isn’t available. It’s sold out, or the store never carried it in the first place.

Fixing the searches that shouldn’t be failing

A well-optimized site search can resolve many No Results pages.

That means assigning synonyms to queries, suggesting synonyms based on how customers actually search, correcting typos automatically, understanding different grammatical forms, recognizing product code variations, and recommending alternatives when something’s out of stock.

This is what makes the difference between a search engine that only matches exact strings and one that understands what a shopper actually meant.

Why fixing no results pages matters for revenue

One-third of customers exit immediately after a failed search. Many of them don’t try a different query. They leave and buy from a competitor instead, and the store loses the sale even though it may have had the exact product the customer wanted.

The exit rate stays fairly consistent across verticals, ranging from 28% in Pets to 40% in Books & Games and Marketplaces. Pets has the highest no-result rate of any vertical but the lowest exit rate once a search actually fails. Books & Games and Marketplaces have some of the lowest no-result rates yet lose the largest share of customers when a search does come up empty. The verticals with the worst no-result problem aren’t necessarily the ones losing the most customers over it.

No-result search performance by vertical

Here are all no-result search statistics at a glance.

Frequently asked questions