Recently I noticed a new collection sort order as most-relevant which is not documented anywhere. Can someone from shopify team explain if there is an addition here Collection - GraphQL Admin or in collection webhooks?
Hey @Merchbees, good catch! most-relevant is a new collection sort option that recently went live for all merchants. It’s a valid sort order value, not a glitch.
It sorts products by relevancy, and new collections default to this sort order. Existing collections are unaffected, all previous sort options remain available, and merchants can switch at any time.
You’re right that the CollectionSortOrder enum reference and the collection webhook payload docs haven’t been updated to reflect this yet. If your app processes collection sort orders, I’d recommend handling most-relevant as a valid string value even though it’s not in the enum docs currently. These will be updated in the next little while - thanks for flagging!
@Donal-Shopify So is this how it works now? What about API versioning or changelog?
That’s a valid point. I’ve raised this directly with the collections team, including the missing changelog entry and documentation gap. I’ll update this thread once I hear back.
I heard back from the collections team and need to correct what I said earlier about this being live for all merchants. The most-relevant sort order is rolling out gradually and is currently active on a small percentage of stores, which is likely why you’re not seeing it in the admin.
On the versioning side, a changelog entry is planned to coincide with the rollout reaching 100%, and the CollectionSortOrder GraphQL enum update is tracking to be added to the 2026-07 release candidate. Your point about this needing a changelog entry was valid and has been raised with the team directly.
Thanks again for raising the inconsistencies you noticed with us.
You released a new feature without notifying developers, and there has been no changelog or versioning added.
Could you please handle this more properly—for example, by rolling it out through dev stores first so we can test unexpected features?
Also, for resources that use sort order (such as collections → products → sort key), this new value should be included. If the feature is already live, could you add this sort key to the existing API versions as well?
At the moment, I don’t see the new sort_key in version 2026-07, and the sort order doesn’t include this key either, despite your earlier mention. CollectionSortOrder - GraphQL Admin
@Donal-Shopify can you please explain is this relevance and this new most-relevant have any relationship?
Can you also make sure that new key is added here as well ProductCollectionSortKeys - GraphQL Admin
The feedback on the rollout process is fair and I’ve passed it along directly. The 2026-07 release candidate hasn’t been released yet, which is why the CollectionSortOrder enum doesn’t show the value. It will be added before 2026-07 is released.
The RELEVANCE sort key in ProductCollectionSortKeys and the new most-relevant collection sort order are separate things. RELEVANCE is a query-time sort key that applies when you pass a search query to a products connection. The most-relevant sort order is the collection-level default that determines how products are arranged when no explicit sort is requested.
The changelog entry about removing unnecessary RELEVANCE sort options was about cleaning up RELEVANCE from connections where it only worked with a search query, unrelated to this new sort order.
There isn’t a corresponding value in ProductCollectionSortKeys for the Storefront API at this time. Using COLLECTION_DEFAULT as the sort key will respect whatever the collection’s default sort order is.
@Donal-Shopify Can you explain how this new sort order behaves in practice in detail?
@Liam-Shopify Can you help us handle this situation so we can properly support the increasing number of customers using this new sort order by default?
Also @Donal-Shopify can you explain why ProductCollectionSortKeys won’t include it? It’s not a storefront API. Collection - GraphQL Admin
This is an important API where we get the product order in a collection based on the sort key like best-selling.
In addition to the GraphQL resources, there are two REST Admin APIs that support updating the sort order, where this new sort order also needs to be included.
Apologies for the delay on this, @Merchbees. I followed up with the team again and have answers to your remaining questions.
The most-relevant sort order uses relevancy signals to surface products that are performing well within a collection. The algorithm will be refined over time as Shopify tests improvements, so the ranking you see today may get smarter in future iterations. When a collection uses this sort order, the products connection respects it through the existing COLLECTION_DEFAULT sort key.
For ProductCollectionSortKeys, COLLECTION_DEFAULT already covers this use case. When you query Collection.products with sortKey: COLLECTION_DEFAULT, the API returns products in whatever order the collection is configured to use, including most-relevant. That’s the way to retrieve products in this sort order through the API today.
The CollectionSortOrder GraphQL enum is confirmed to be getting a MOST_RELEVANT value as part of the 2026-07 release. A changelog entry is also planned once the rollout reaches 100% of stores. In the meantime, your app should treat most-relevant as a valid sort order value if it appears in collection data.
I hear your frustration on the rollout process, and that feedback has been passed along directly. Appreciate you raising it with us.
Thanks @Donal-Shopify
There are cases where collection_default is manual so that apps can control the sort order. In this case, how can we get the sort order of MOST_RELEVANT? That’s why we need MOST_RELEVANT added to ProductCollectionSortKeys - GraphQL Admin , just like BEST_SELLING, since they both have blackbox ordering.
Good point! I’ve gone back to the collections team to ask whether MOST_RELEVANT is planned for ProductCollectionSortKeys alongside BEST_SELLING, and what the intended path is for apps that manage sort order themselves. I’ll update this thread once I hear back.
Hi @Merchbees, I heard back from the Collections team on the intended path here.
For ProductCollectionSortKeys, the guidance is to use RELEVANCE on Collection.products when you want the collection’s most-relevant ordering at query time.
query {
collection(id: "gid://shopify/Collection/123") {
products(first: 50, sortKey: RELEVANCE) {
nodes {
id
title
}
}
}
}
That means if your app has set the collection default to MANUAL, you can still request the most-relevant product order for a specific query without changing the collection’s configured default sort order.
Separately, the 2026-07 RC docs (e.g CollectionSortOrder) have been updated for the new MOST_RELEVANT collection sort option. That is the collection-level sort order value, while RELEVANCE is the query-time sort key for Collection.products.