This guide outlines best practices to help you avoid these issues and maximize efficiency.
General Principles
Everything configured after segments—including rules, exclusions, and mass corrections in the preview—must be calculated in real-time each time the feed is generated.
- These calculations are resource-intensive and can slow down the overall performance.
- Segments, however, are pre-processed during indexing and stored in the database, making them immediately available and significantly reducing processing time.
- Limit optimization rules to a maximum of 50 per catalogue (technical limitation). Exceeding this limit can cause miscalculations or unexpected behaviour.
- Limit the number of additional sources, with 10 being a reasonable maximum to maintain performance.
Exclusions
Exclusions should be used sparingly and only for exceptional or temporary cases. Otherwise, segments should be preferred.
If exclusions must be used, follow these best practices:
Golden Rule: Avoid Complex Exclusion Rules
Exclusions based on long product ID lists are not recommended:
- Slowdowns often occur when the system checks for specific IDs within long lists containing dozens or even hundreds of entries. Although this process may seem straightforward, it requires significant processing time. This method should only be used for small lists (max 10 IDs).
Instead of using ID lists in exclusions, add a field in an additional source (Yes/No value) and create a rule based on it.
Exclusion Guidelines
- It is recommended to disable exclusions when they are not affecting any products. They would trigger unnecessary calculations.
- If an exclusion impacts only a small number of products (e.g., 0.1% or 0.2%), use a segment instead to avoid excessive calculations for minimal impact.
- It is recommended to keep exclusions to 4 or 5 maximum as too many exclusions trigger repeated calculations.
Segments
Follow the same principles as exclusions: when possible, use segments instead of exclusions to reduce processing time.
Rules
Use the correct operator for rules based on the field type (text vs. numeric values) to avoid processing errors.
Preview Changes
Avoid making direct product changes or rule-based adjustments in the preview.
Instead, update the catalogue data whenever possible or optimize the data at the source.