Signals capture

Catalog sync gives you the shape of your store. Signals capture gives you the shape of demand against it: what shoppers are searching for, what they're adding to cart, what they're buying. Activating it takes one toggle in your theme editor.

What signals capture does

The signals embed runs quietly on your storefront and records two kinds of activity.

Search queries
When a shopper types into your search bar, hits Enter, or lands on a search-results page, the query string is sent to VeryQuery.
Cart-adds
When a shopper hits "Add to cart" on a product page, the embed records which item was added.

Both signals feed your intelligence map: hot regions are where shoppers are looking and considering, cool regions are the long tail, gaps surface searches with no good catalog match.

Order signals are captured separately via Shopify's order webhook (no theme embed needed for orders); see Shopper actions we capture for the complete picture.

Signals embed vs. storefront search embed

VeryQuery has two separate theme embeds that do different things. You can enable either, both, or neither.

VQ Signals
This page. Captures queries and cart-adds quietly, doesn't change anything visible to shoppers.
VQ Search
Replaces your storefront's search-results page with a ranked grid (sort + filters). See Storefront search.

If you enable Storefront search, queries are recorded automatically as part of serving results, so the Signals embed isn't strictly required for query capture. We still recommend enabling Signals too. It captures cart-adds, which the Search embed alone doesn't see.

If you don't want VeryQuery to take over your search page (e.g. you're using another search provider's storefront layer), enable just the Signals embed. Your other provider keeps serving the storefront, and VeryQuery still gets the query stream for your intelligence map.

Activate the embed

  1. In your Shopify admin, open Online Store, Themes.
  2. Click Customize on your active theme.
  3. In the theme editor's left sidebar, click the puzzle-piece icon labeled App embeds.
  4. Find VQ Signals in the list and toggle it on.
  5. Click Save in the top right.

Capture is now live. The next search anyone runs on your storefront, and the next item anyone adds to cart, will appear in your VeryQuery dashboard within a few seconds.

Verify it's working

Open your storefront in a private browser window, run a search for something you know is in your catalog, and watch the Search Queries page in your dashboard. The query should land within a few seconds, tagged with shopify as the source. Add an item to cart from a product page; the cart-add will appear on the same page tagged the same way.

What gets captured (and what doesn't)

Queries
The query text, an anonymous session ID (regenerated per browser tab session), the source path the query came from, and a timestamp.
Cart-adds
The product ID added, the same anonymous session ID, and a timestamp.
Not captured
Shopper identity, customer account, email, IP address, browser fingerprint, or any data tied to a person across visits. The session ID resets when the shopper closes their tab. Cart quantity, prices, and order details are also never recorded by this embed.

Cart-add edge case

Most modern Shopify themes use AJAX for cart-add (the cart updates without a full page reload). The signals embed sees those reliably. A small number of older themes still use a form-submit-and-navigate flow where the page reloads on cart-add; those flows aren't captured, because the embed has no chance to see the request before the page navigates away. If you suspect this is your case, your theme's cart-add JavaScript will tell you (look for /cart/add.js; if you see it, you're fine).

Privacy and consent

The capture embed is treated as analytics under privacy frameworks. If you use a cookie or consent banner, configure it to gate analytics scripts and the embed will respect the shopper's choice. We don't use cookies, sell data, or share queries with anyone outside your org.

Turning it off

Same place you turned it on. Theme editor, App embeds, toggle VQ Signals off, Save. New queries and cart-adds stop flowing immediately. Existing signals already in your property aren't affected.

Multiple themes

If you switch to a different theme, you'll need to enable the embed in that theme's editor too. Themes carry their own app-embed settings.

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