How many typos can be made in the word "acetylsalicylic acid"?
We counted 192 possible mistakes for a single query, factoring in four types of keyboard misclicks across two layouts. And that's not even the limit. Now imagine that i-teka has around 50,000 products on its site.
This is why search optimization is crucial for online stores, especially in complex industries. Without effective query processing, businesses risk losing thousands of orders daily.
Over the last month, Multisearch on the i-teka site corrected 7,035 errors.
For comparison, in an online grocery store, the percentage of search queries with errors is 4%, in pharmacies it’s 12%. Here, it’s 28%. This is because people often type product names as they hear them. Many of these are long and complex, even hard to pronounce.
In the past month, we corrected 7,035 errors in the search: 6,790 were typos, and another 245 were due to the wrong keyboard layout. All of these are potential purchases.
"Earlier, if a person made a typo in the name of a medication, the search would return 0 results. Now, all queries that previously had no results are being found by users," note the project marketers.
See how the implementation of Multisearch has improved search performance, boosted company revenue, and increased the traffic to other categories of the portal in the case study.
What the Search Was Like Before: 2 Main Issues
SEO Specialist
When I joined the project, I saw a high bounce rate—90% of cases were "not found."
That meant users couldn’t find what they were looking for and simply left. And as an SEO specialist, I was losing the users I had brought in. So, that’s where we started.
Two major search issues were directly affecting product and service sales:
- One typo and the search returned zero results.
Even a simple word like "aspirin" typed as "aspErin" wouldn’t appear in the results. For long and complex drug names or INNs, users could generate hundreds of variations.
Examples of misspelled search queries that the old system failed to process:
Just look at how people type medication names—one word with nine letters could contain four mistakes at once.
CTO
We knew that people frequently misspelled drug names.
Some names are hard to remember, let alone spell correctly. Often, someone gets a recommendation, hears the name, and tries to type it out from memory.
There’s no single common typo—everyone makes mistakes in their own way.
2. Each of the 5 Categories Had a Separate Search
To find pharmacies, doctors, medical centers, or services, users had to navigate to a specific category.
The problem was that most users didn’t even realize the portal offered anything beyond medications, so they rarely explored other sections.
CTO
Now, the portal has a unified search, making everything accessible in one place.
As soon as a user starts typing, they see that the search isn’t limited to medications. They click on a relevant result and are immediately taken to the right category.
We’ve shortened the user journey by several steps.
How the Search Issues Were Addressed before
At first, the team tried improving the search system in-house, but the changes weren’t significant.
- Attempts included:
- Accounting for keyboard layout mismatches
- Displaying suggestions after users typed a certain number of characters
- Implementing a "Did you mean?" feature with alternative options
CTO
Now, the portal has a unified search, making everything accessible in one place.
As soon as a user starts typing, they see that the search isn’t limited to medications. They click on a relevant result and are immediately taken to the right category.
We’ve shortened the user journey by several steps.
2. Alternative Approaches Considered:
- Creating a custom field in Bitrix24, where managers would manually enter word variations to train the system to recognize typos and keyword differences
- Building an in-house module, but after consulting with developers, it became clear that this would be too expensive and time-consuming
What We Implemented
Right after integration, the system started handling a wide range of search queries with typos and misspellings, incorrect keyboard layouts, transliteration, morphology, synonyms
It also recognizes natural language queries, allowing users to search by symptoms or intended use instead of exact medication names.
CTO
Now, even if a user makes a typo, they land on the right result immediately.
The search engine autocorrects errors in real time and displays the full product name. Users often know what they’re looking for but don’t know how to spell it—and we help them out.
CTO
We were really surprised that users could just type "headache", and the system would still return relevant results.
We had never analyzed whether people searched like this before, but it’s likely that some users were typing "pills for headaches."
Now, even if the search isn’t perfect in every case, it still delivers results.
After the API integration, the company also introduced regional filtering, allowing search results to adapt based on the user’s location.
This is especially useful for e-commerce, where product prices and availability vary by region.
Integration Process: Plugin + API
Step 1: Quick Launch with the Multisearch Plugin
For a fast start, the company installed the Multisearch plugin, which they used for the first two months.
Step 2: Expanding Functionality with API
Later, i-teka’s marketing team decided to enhance the search with Autocomplete, a feature available only via API. At the same time, they wanted to maintain the familiar look and feel of the plugin.
Multisearch’s flexibility made it possible to combine the plugin’s search with the API’s advanced capabilities.
The integration of both the plugin and the API turned out to be clear and simple for the team.
SEO Specialist
It’s like having Google inside the project.
The Multisearch support team stood out for its care and efficiency.
CTO
Installing the plugin was incredibly simple. Plus, its design was already a perfect match for our website.
The API integration was also smooth. The documentation was thorough, so we needed just a day or two to figure out exactly what to do.
Results After Integration: 3 Key Improvements
After analyzing search performance with Multisearch from May 2022 to May 2023, we identified three major changes:
- Increased Search Usage (+42.57%). The percentage of users utilizing the search grew by 42.57%, even though overall site traffic remained unchanged. This indicates that users now trust the tool more and rely on it actively.
CTO
Communication was top-notch. The Telegram chats are extremely convenient.
Instead of listing names and job titles, team members are labeled by function—sales, support, finance—so it's instantly clear who’s responding and about what.
We even adopted this approach in our own company
2. The bounce rate decreased from 21% to 17%, according to project data. And the portal became noticeably faster.
3. The popularity of other portal services has increased thanks to the introduction of a unified search on the site.
Previously, each category had a separate search, and many users didn’t even realize that the portal offered more than just medications.
First, users searching for medications now see results from other categories, as drug names or symptoms they enter often overlap with medical services.
Second, the more people find medications, the more often they see the list of pharmacies where they are available. As a result, the number of inquiries to these pharmacies increases, leading to higher project revenue.
Product Manager
The most important thing is that the site has become more user-friendly, helping more people find the right medications and services.
For us as a business, this means higher conversion rates, lower bounce rates, and increased sales.
But our main goal remains customer satisfaction—and Multisearch helps us deliver a better experience.
Why Multisearch was Choosen
Before joining i-teka, SEO specialist Ivan Zvyagin worked on modernizing the search system for the electronics retailer "Bilyi Veter."
Using Multisearch, the store increased search-driven conversions by 63%. Given this experience, he immediately recommended our service to his new team.
Product Manager
Pharmacies now see and appreciate our effectiveness as a valuable traffic source.
Over the past year, we have attracted many new pharmacy partners, which helped us grow financially.
Even after doubling our service fees, many pharmacies stayed with us—because we proved our value to them.
Want to see how a new search can boost your online store's sales in just a few days? Integrate Multisearch here. 14 days free.