Toolkit: Keyword Search

Keyword Search lets you type any word or phrase, such as “dock” or “pizza oven”, and see every home whose listing text mentions it, without tagging anything first.

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What it does #

Guests care about features that your property data may not list as an amenity or tag: a dock, a bunk room, a pizza oven. The words are usually somewhere in the listing, buried in a description or a photo caption, but you cannot find them without opening homes one at a time.

Keyword Search keeps a text index of your published homes on your own site. The index is kept current as homes sync from your PMS and as you edit them. The Keyword Finder in the HomeRunner Toolkit Hub searches that index and shows each matching home with the word highlighted in context. Results come from your site, not from your PMS, and there is no per-search cost.

For example, a search for dock, boat slip lists every home that mentions either phrase, with up to three highlighted mentions per home.

What the Finder gives you:

• A live result list that updates as you type.
• Each home with its thumbnail, hit count, the field each mention came from, and View and Edit links.
• A Possibly negated flag when every mention in a field sits right after “no”, “not”, “without”, or “non”, so “no dock” does not pass as a dock.
• Copy names and Export CSV buttons for the current results.
• A Coverage gaps report that shows where listing text and your tags disagree.

Keyword Search reads the base language of your listings only. The Finder is a lookup tool for you and does not change any tags. A guest-facing search is a separate setting, covered under Guest search below.

How to turn it on #

1. Switch on the module #

In the HomeRunner Toolkit Hub, switch on Keyword Search (listed under Display). The Keyword Finder panel appears in the Hub once the module is on, and it is available to administrators only.

2. Let the index build #

The first time the module runs, it builds the index for all published homes in the background. The status strip at the top of the Finder shows where it stands:

• Index ready: every published home is indexed.
• Index catching up or Index building: homes are still in the queue. You can search now, but recent edits may not show yet.
• Index error: something went wrong. The strip shows the last error.

The line below the strip shows how many homes are indexed, the backlog, how many homes are parked, and when the last full build ran.

3. Search #

1. Type a word or phrase in Find homes that mention. Separate alternatives with commas, up to 5 at a time, for example dock, boat slip, boat lift.
2. Leave Whole words only on to match complete words, or turn it off to match inside longer words.
3. Under Search in, tick the fields to search. Everything is ticked by default.
4. Optionally, pick a tag or amenity under Count the matches already tagged with. The result summary then shows how many of the matching homes already carry it.

Searches ignore case, accents, and punctuation, so “Fire-Pit”, “fire pit”, and “firepit” all match each other. Plural endings match too: “kayak” finds “kayaks”.

4. Check coverage gaps #

Under Coverage gaps, select Check coverage gaps. The Finder checks a built-in list of about 40 features (dock, hot tub, game room, pizza oven, EV charger, and similar). For each feature it shows:

• Homes that mention it in the title, descriptions, or photo captions.
• Homes with a matching amenity, tag, or group.
• Mentioned without one, the homes where the text says it but no tag or amenity does.

Select Show homes on any row to open that list in the Finder. Features with no gap are left out of the report.

Settings #

Setting	What it controls
Find homes that mention	The word or phrase to search for. Commas separate up to 5 alternatives. Each alternative can hold up to 6 words and 80 characters. Words shorter than 2 characters are ignored, and the Finder tells you what it ignored.
Whole words only	On by default. Matches complete words only. Turn it off to match inside longer words.
Search in	Which fields to search, in five groups: Descriptions (summary, short summary, listing name, house manual, notes, access, getting around, host interaction, neighborhood, the space), Photo captions, Amenities, Tags and groups (tags, groups, property types, cities, locations), and Title. All are on by default.
Count the matches already tagged with	Optional. Pick a tag or amenity to see how many matching homes already carry it. Off by default.
Copy names	Copies the matching home names to your clipboard.
Export CSV	Downloads the current results with home ID, name, hits, fields, and View and Edit links.
Rebuild index	Re-indexes every published home. Use it if the status strip shows homes missing or an error.
Retry	Appears next to any home that could not be indexed. Tries that home again.

Guest search: Search by feature #

Guest search puts the same index in front of your guests. When it is on, the listings page shows a Search by feature chip at the start of the Searchbar Pro filter row. On a site without filter chips the chip sits beside the results count, and on phones it sits inside the results panel. A grid with no filters, such as the related homes on a property page, has no chip. To add the chip to such a grid, a developer puts data-hrtk-keyword-search="on" on a wrapper around it. The same attribute set to off removes the chip from an explorer that has filters. A guest types a word or phrase, such as kayak or pizza oven, and the list narrows to the homes whose listing text mentions it.

Each matching card shows what matched: the amenity, or the sentence from the description with the word highlighted. The results count reads, for example, 19 homes of 75, so the guest can see what the search removed.

Turn it on #

1. Open Toolkit > Keyword Search and tick Turn on guest search.
2. Under Text guests can match on, choose which parts of the listing text guests can search. The defaults are the parts every HomeRunner template shows to visitors: title, summary, short summary, photo captions, amenities, tags and groups. Tick a description section such as The space or Neighborhood only if your template shows that section to guests. Saving a changed list rebuilds the index.
3. Tick Show description text on cards to quote the matching sentence on the card. On HomeRunner hosting the box is available. On other hosting it stays greyed out until the site’s cache is confirmed not to serve stale search results. Ask support, or have a developer return true from the hrtk_keyword_edge_purge_verified filter.
4. Under The search control, pick how it starts: a button that opens the search field (the default), or a field that is always open. Leave the accent color empty to use the site’s primary color; while Searchbar Pro is on, its accent color is used.
5. Leave Suggest features to guests ticked and guests see, when the field opens, the features other guests look for, counted from your own listings. Pinned terms come first, in the order you type them, up to eight. A hidden term is never suggested.

While the index rebuilds #

A changed field list or a plugin update rebuilds the index. While that runs, the Search by feature chip is not on the page, so no guest is offered a search that cannot answer yet. The chip returns on its own once the index is ready, usually within a few minutes.

Features mentioned as nearby #

Listing text often describes a feature that is near the home: tennis courts just 4 minutes away, or a restaurant 2 miles from the house. The search reads the sentence around each mention. A home whose only mentions of a feature are of that kind stays in the results with the card badge Nearby: Tennis courts, and it is left out of that feature’s suggestion count. With description text on cards, the quoted sentence shows the distance. Amenities and tags count as facts about the home and are never read as nearby. To drop such homes from the results, or to switch the rule off, a developer sets the hrtk_keyword_nearby_mode filter to exclude or off.

What guests search for #

Every guest search lands in the same search log as the rest of the explorer’s searches, alongside the filters and chips the guest used.

Tips #

• Run the coverage gaps report first. It shows which features your listing text already describes but your tags and amenities do not, which is the quickest way to find tagging work.
• To act on a list, use Copy names or Export CSV, then add the missing tag or amenity to those homes. To keep date-based tags current, see Auto Tags.
• If a result seems wrong, check for the Possibly negated flag and open the listing with View before relying on it.
• If a home does not appear after an edit, check the status strip. A small backlog clears on its own, and a daily check catches anything missed. If it does not clear, select Rebuild index.
• If the Finder says the keyword index tables are missing, switch Keyword Search off and on again to recreate them.
• For the other search tools in the Hub, see Toolkit: Internal Property Search and Toolkit: Under the hood.