# Strategies

In Recommendations & Merchandising, a **strategy** is the combination of one or more rules, applied at a specific location, with a given purpose.

There are three main types of strategies:

1. **Search**: control how products are ordered in search results, applying business logic beyond simple keyword matching.
2. **Merchandising**: manage the order of products within a category or collection, ensuring business priorities (e.g., promoting seasonal items, burying low-margin products) are respected.
3. **Recommendations**: generate dynamic lists of products based on user behavior, context, or product relationships (e.g., similar products, associated products).

Each strategy starts with a rule, and can then be enriched with sorting, filtered by properties, or styled through templates, to create a complete user-facing experience.

Learn more about the following Recommendations & Merchandising concepts: 

* [Placements](https://docs.abtasty.com/recommendations-and-merchandising/concepts/strategies/placement-where-strategies-are-displayed)
* [Rules](https://docs.abtasty.com/recommendations-and-merchandising/concepts/strategies/rules)
* [Ranking blocks](https://docs.abtasty.com/recommendations-and-merchandising/concepts/strategies/rules/presets-default-algorithms/algorithms-usage)