Elasticsearch: Does search in frontend work that way?

Question

I thought my Elasticsearch is configured correctly. 'Test connection' in the admin panel is successful and the quick search there shows many entries as dropdown, as you can see in the screenshot below. I have already reindexed - if this is all what is required to build up data in Elasticsearch.

But I have two problems:

1. If I enter something into the search box, the response takes about a second. Shouldn't it be much faster? This concerns frontend and admin panel.

2. In the quick search of the frontend I see only the already entered terms in the dropdown list. See the image below. Shouldn't there be entries similar to the admin panel?

As you can see, I have searched for 'print' and already hit the Enter button. Then I typed 'print' into the search box again, to show what I get offered during typing. Actually, there are more products that match to 'print', but I can see only what I have entered already. This shouldn't be like that, right?

The browser's request is https://my-domain.com/search/ajax/suggest/?q=print&_=1597670046451 and the response is:

[{title":"print","num_results":"253"},{"title":"Printer 20","num_results":"241"}] 

If I search for 'print' on the command line, I get the following:

$ curl -i http://es_machine:9200/_search?pretty=true&q=print
{
  "took" : 1,
  "timed_out" : false,
  "_shards" : {
    "total" : 1,
    "successful" : 1,
    "skipped" : 0,
    "failed" : 0
  },
  "hits" : {
    "total" : {
      "value" : 768,
      "relation" : "eq"
    },
    "max_score" : 1.0,
    "hits" : [
      {
        "_index" : "g6master_product_1_v3",
        "_type" : "document",
        "_id" : "1",
        "_score" : 1.0,
        "_source" : {
          "store_id" : "1",
          "sku" : "T_121985",
          "status" : "1",
          "status_value" : "Enabled",
          "visibility" : "4",
          "tax_class_id" : "2",
          "tax_class_id_value" : "Taxable Goods",
          "name" : "Printer 15 - Textplatte",
          "url_key" : "textplatte-colop-printer-15",
          "description" : ".....",
          "short_description" : "....",
          "category_ids" : [
            3,
            4,
            5,
            6
          ],
          "position_category_3" : "0",
          "name_category_3" : "Produkte",
          "position_category_4" : "10000",
          "name_category_4" : "Textplatten",
          "position_category_5" : "0",
          "name_category_5" : "Colop Printer Line",
          "position_category_6" : "0",
          "name_category_6" : "ALL",
          "price_0_1" : "10.680000",
          "price_1_1" : "10.680000",
          "price_2_1" : "10.680000",
          "price_3_1" : "10.680000"
        }
      },
      {
        "_index" : "g6master_product_1_v3",
        "_type" : "document",
        "_id" : "2",
        .
        .
        .

Currently, I don't know if this is how it should be and also where to find and fix the problem. What could be wrong? Any hints are much appreciated!

Answer 1

if you are really looking for better search you need to mess with elasticsearch config files in magento, customize it, and test.

but usually even enterprise version search sucks, this is why they install Smile ElasticSearch Suite. https://github.com/Smile-SA/elasticsuite

this will extend magento default search functionality and a lot more.

welcome to magento "not a bug, is a feature" world...