🔍 ASDA clearly displays “No results found for [keyword], showing results for [fuzzy matched term] instead”

🔍 Taking fuzzy matching a step further, John Lewis displays a few similar searches in case the first fuzzy didn’t hit the nail

🔍  1st Dibs provides a fallback to the original search, but remember — catalog search is not Google — you (hopefully) don’t have millions of documents that may match the query. The user is likely to be disappointed by a “no results found” outcome

🔍 Instead of asking customers to go find your search icon and fiddle with the search widget again, why not show it front-and-center on the page?

🔍 e.l.f. uses “Search again” hint text for extra oomph

🔍 LL Bean combines search suggestions with an inline search box and You Might Like suggestions, in that order ;)

🔍 Pandora takes the same approach

🔍 JC Penney includes a customer service block with its search box and search tips to cover all the bases

🐕 Chewy shows contact information front-and-center for those that want human help

👟 Foot Locker suggests brands and best sellers when no matches can be found

👀 New Look provides 2 fallbacks: a “did you mean” fuzzy match suggestion, and top-level categories so customers don’t need to pull out the nav menu

👀 REI reminds you of what you recently viewed and shows similar products to keep you on-site

🐕 No results found and 404 pages offer an opportunity to get clever with your copy. Love Chewy’s doggo reference

🫣 This merchant fails to explain how the matches were determined

🫣 This merchant is using fuzzy matching, but should say “0 matches returned for “nike,” showing results for “nice”

🫣  This merchant does at least call out that no matches were found for the input query, but misses the opportunity to explain why these matches appear

🫣 Self explanatory!