Search merchants/shops by free-text query (name or domain fragment), optionally filtered by country (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, e.g. "DE") and/or by an EXACT category slug. Returns the public shop view only — shops still under internal review are never returned. `results` carries at most `limit` entries (default 50, max 100); `total_count` is the full match count before that cap and `truncated` is true when more results exist beyond this page — raise `offset` (default 0) to page through them. Multi-word queries are matched conjunctively: every word must be evidenced on a shop (name, domain or category). `ignored_terms` lists the words that matched nothing anywhere in the corpus and were therefore dropped to avoid an empty answer — a non-empty `ignored_terms` means the results answer a NARROWER question than you asked, so do not present them as satisfying those words. `match_quality` says how well the query was evidenced: "full" (every word found as a name/domain/category fragment — this is evidence of a fragment, NOT relevance, results are not ranked), "partial" (some words are in `ignored_terms`; the results answer a narrower question), "none" (no match). For "partial" and "none", `suggestions` carries hints instead of a guess: `categories` (slugs from `list_categories`, German words like "schuhe" are mapped, retry with `category`) and `shops` (domains within typo distance, e.g. "bergzeitt" -> bergzeit.de); both are empty for "full". `category_truncated` is true when category resolution hit its internal cap and the match set is a subset. `category`, if given, must be one of the slugs returned by `list_categories` — call that tool first, do not guess a slug; an unrecognized slug is rejected with an error (never a silent empty `results`). `category` is additive to `query` (AND, not OR) — pass `query: ""` to browse a category without a name/domain filter. If many shops match, grouping by country or category keeps the list scannable.