Our freshly minted evaluation, The Forrester Wave™: Commerce Search And Product Discovery Solutions, Q3 2025, makes it clear that digital businesses are in a search pinch right now.

If they don’t have a standalone search solution, they’re likely limping along with whatever “came with” commerce. That’s not good enough anymore, and it’s time to plan for incremental adoption of one of these solutions, which have quickly evolved well beyond the “good enough.”

This Market Is Moving Fast

In the 2011 Boston Marathon, Ryan Hall ran at a lightning-fast (and unofficial US-record-setting) marathon pace of 2:04:58. For the subsequent New York City Marathon later that year, Hall’s sponsor, ASICS, set up challenges for those watching the race, mounting a harness over a treadmill that was set to his blazing pace to allow people to see how long they could maintain it. Spoiler: Many were quickly flung off the treadmill when they tried to jump on it at that pace.

What does the treadmill challenge have in common with the current commerce search and product discovery market? This market is moving blazingly fast right now. The “good enough” search functionality embedded in commerce solutions is left in the dust by the rapid innovation of standalone solutions over the past two years. A new vendor trying to break into this market now would feel like being lowered onto that ASICS treadmill.

The vendors in the Forrester Wave evaluation for commerce search and product discovery already had established solutions in the market when generative AI hit mainstream a few years ago, and they’re building on those foundations as quickly as they can. They’ve stabilized their acquisitions and integrated their own preexisting tech with the latest models from major AI players, and they’re now injecting new innovation into their products at a Ryan Hall-esque pace.

The prerequisite landscape report for this market established the core functions that all vendors in the space provide: search configuration, search personalization, merchandising, and facet management. But we also saw vendors offer varied support for specialized use cases (such as search for B2B industrial manufacturers or retail applications) and unique strengths (like technical configuration tooling or controls over the timing of in-session personalization).

GenAI Throws This Market Into Overdrive

As is the case with so many tech markets right now, genAI is forever changing this market’s functionality, breadth, and application. In fact, nearly half of the vendors in this evaluation demonstrated live examples of agentic/conversational product discovery experiences on customer sites. Most of these applications launched recently, and in many cases, they are still in a testing phase.

GenAI changes everything, but it is not a cure-all for commerce. Sometimes, such a rapid pace of innovation leads to premature products with unproven results. (In fact, about half of the customer examples that vendors provided in their responses for this research could not be verified during scoring.) Stay tuned for more from me on the state of these applications and the quality of the experiences for end users.

Here’s my best advice for digital businesses assessing commerce search solutions:

  1. Focus on results. Begin conversations with commerce search and product discovery vendors, but focus on ROI. Ask them where they anticipate that you’ll receive the most value, and ask them how they might guarantee your results.
  2. Take a modular and incremental approach. The “Evaluated Vendors And Product Information” graphic in this Wave is the most complex compared with all of my previous evaluations. The collection of modules that businesses must purchase from these vendors to receive the complete functionality we evaluated is sometimes a lengthy list. The modularity brings the opportunity to start small (with just a module or two), measure the impact, and expand adoption over time. Some modules, however, contain “core” functionality that enables the other modules to function, so anticipate some required modules with the initial adoption phase.
  3. Expect “beta” in some areas. Make sure that your vendor explains to you the maturity of cutting-edge functionality. Stay ready to test and establish a culture of perpetual internal and user testing to ensure positive experiences — not just business results.
  4. Lean on your peers. Use our “Customers Like Us” tool to help vendors identify their current customers that have similar business models and needs to yours. Aim to set up conversations with counterparts at customer organizations for all members of your vendor selection team, including the users who will rely on the solution. Ask the hard questions of your peers who have gone down that path before you.

Let’s Discuss Further!

For more specific support and advice as you choose your first — or next — commerce search and product discovery solution, please reach out to me and book a guidance session. We will figure out where you stand to gain the most, dig into the Wave results, and work through your vendor shortlist together.