Search is a critical component of any marketplace, determining how one side of your users finds what they are looking for from the other. You can define the type of search to support depending on your users' needs. You can also add filtering options to your marketplace, including general filter options and specific field filters.

You can configure your Listing search options in Console > Build > Listings > Listing search.

Search type covers how users can initiate their search in your search bar. Sharetribe has two different search types or search functions: keyword and location search.

Keyword search prompts users to start their search by typing in a keyword or phrase into the search bar. Location, meanwhile, allows users to search by typing a location such as a street, city, or country into the search bar.

You can read more about these features and how they work in these articles:

Keyword and location search can be enabled simultaneously. Location search needs to be your configured search type and keyword search enabled as a filter. How this works is that users are able to search by location from your search bar. They can then filter the results using a keyword filter.

Available when Location search is configured as the search type. When enabled, a keyword filter is shown on the search page, allowing users to filter the available results by keywords or phrases. Listing titles and descriptions are used for keyword searches by default, but you can also include Free text custom fields in the search.

Learn more about keyword search.

When enabled, this adds a Listing Type filter to the search page. Selecting a Listing Type shows only listings that belong to that Listing type.

Learn more about Listing types.

When enabled, this adds a category filter to the search page. Selecting a category returns only listings within that category. Because categories are nested, choosing a top‑level category also includes every listing in its sub‑categories (and their sub‑categories, if any). Choosing a lower‑level sub‑category shows only the listings assigned directly to that specific sub‑category.

Learn more about categories.

When enabled, this adds a date range filter to the search page. Users can then limit results to listings available during their selected booking dates—only listings open in that period are shown. The settings below specify exactly how the Date Range filter behaves.

You can choose Partial availability or Full availability

You can choose Daily availability or Nightly availability

If you enable the date range filter, you can also enable the Seats filter, which allows users to refine their search results based on the number of available seats. Seats represent the maximum number of bookings or participants allowed for a single time slot in a listing, enabling providers to set capacity and customers to book multiple spots if available.

The price filter option allows you to add a filter to the search page. You can define the minimum and maximum range for the filter. Users can then filter listings with specific price ranges, thus excluding listings that are too cheap or too expensive.

Use the minimum and maximum values to define ranges relevant to your marketplace. Otherwise, when users use the filter, they might inadvertently filter out good listings because of the wrong filter configuration. Price filters do not define listing price limits.

You can create filters out of custom listing fields. These filters are created when building your custom listing fields.

Learn more about creating custom listing fields and filters.