The Best WordPress Search Plugins

We all want the tools for developing and running WordPress sites to be reliable. But when you develop many projects at the same time, such tools are priceless. Especially when you have tight deadlines and constant deadlines. One of the helper tools is a reliable custom search for your WordPress sites.

A good site always needs advanced user search. Therefore, web developers will need a flexible and reusable solution that can be organized on every website.

Why do you need a custom search?

WordPress comes with its own default search, but it is incredibly limited, especially if you create your own WordPress websites with a lot of content.

WordPress allows you to add a default search bar widget anywhere on the site. But the problem is that it does not always give the results that users are looking for.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution. A reliable user search will provide you with several filters that allow you to narrow your results and find exactly what you are looking for. And also provide complete freedom in customizing the appearance.

What’s good about custom searches?

Reliable custom WordPress search provides you with a number of important additional features. They will make visiting your site more enjoyable and beneficial for users.

Several WordPress Search Plugins

When searching for a product, you usually mean its inherent functions. For example, if you are looking to buy a house, you will have an idea of your budget, the number of floors and bedrooms, the location of the house and much more.

Many of these features let you narrow your results by entering your requirements into the search form.

Powerful search algorithm

If the site has a lot of content, you will need a powerful search algorithm that will provide more relevant results.

For example, a fuzzy match will display results, even if they do not match exactly what you were looking for. This is important because users do not always enter the correct / exact queries.

AJAX Updates

As you enter your search results, you can add details that will produce different results. AJAX updates adapt results on the fly. Therefore, you will definitely see how various filters change them.

An example of finding the same house: you can switch between the number of bedrooms. AJAX updates will save you time since you don’t have to press Enter every time to see the results.

See also:

WordPress themes for real estate sites, agencies, realtors with powerful search functions.

The Best WordPress Custom Search Plugins

There are some great options for expanding your WordPress search. Below are the three best tools.

Toolset search

Toolset Search will help you to create a complete custom search and design it exactly the way you want it. The best part is that you do not need to know PHP.

Novice webmasters will not have a problem creating a search, and experienced developers will love how quickly they can add a complex function to each of their sites.

Some of the features of Toolset Search include:

• Ability to search all types of content.
• Several filters, including text, characters, and numbers.
• Full control over how your search results look.
• AJAX updates for instantly changing search results.
• Numbering the results so that they do not appear as a single long list.
• Filter the results on the map by distance or from your current location.
• Sorting results by filters.
• Search using quotes, ON and AND queries.

Toolset Search offers a tutorial on custom types that will teach you how to create a search, as well as custom post types, step by step.

Relevanssi

Relevanssi is another great option if you are looking for a search solution that will give accurate results. It is one of the most popular search plugins with over 100,000 installations.

One of the main advantages of Relevanssi is its fuzzy match, which means that it will display results even if there is only a partial match.

Relevanssi offers a free and premium version.

The free version includes the following features:

• Search results are sorted by relevance.
• Results that match one search query or all words.
• Search for phrases with quotes.
• Highlight search terms in documents so users can find the most relevant section.
• Search for comments, tags, categories, and custom fields.
• WPML translation support.
• Advanced filtering of search results.

The premium version also provides some interesting additions:

• Improved spelling correction for “Did you mean” sentences.
• Indexing attachment content.
• Search and index user profiles.
• Weight assignment to any types of posts and taxonomies.
• Assigning extra weight to new posts.
• Choose between an AND and OR searches.
• Export and import settings.

SearchWP

SearchWP is a premium plugin, quite easy to install and at the same time adds many important features.

SearchWP uses keywords instead of exact matches. Therefore, you do not need to rely on exact matches to get the right results.

Some of the features are:

• Several search engines that you can configure using individual settings.
• Indexing PDF and Office documents.
• The ability to search everything, including product information, custom fields, content, and more.
• Integration with plugins, including WooCommerce, bbPress and WP Job Manager.
• Setting the order of ranking results.

Now, when you know why you need a custom search and become familiar with the best search tools, try running it yourself.