5 Professional WordPress Search Plugins
In a very competitive online world, high-quality content, you publish regularly is the first step in building a stronger bond with customers. But it’s all for nothing if your visitors can’t find the info they are looking for in a flash. Whether you plan to create an online store, write your first WordPress blog post, or start a business site of any kind, you need to make sure you have a search system that will narrow down the search results. Although there are many things WordPress is great about, search functionality isn’t its best asset. For example, it doesn’t support search custom post types and taxonomies. The good news is many professional WordPress search plugins bring not only fast and accurate search but clear, concise results as well. Luckily, with the best WordPress plugins from our selection, you can provide your visitors with numerous user-friendly options to find your content:
As a perfect solution for any WordPress website, Site Search 360 is fast and easy-to-install search plugin. After the implementation, it instantly improves the user experience by increasing engagement and page views and boosting relevant content. This plugin is equipped with some smart features that will help you learn what your audience wants. It’s packed with powerful analytics tools in the first place. With them, you can understand the intention behind every search, so you can organize your website better if needed. Furthermore, you can customize this plugin to completely match your brand identity and website’s aesthetics. There is even CSS customization in case you want to adapt it further.
When it comes to search options, Site Search 360 covers all you need from a website search engine. Thanks to it, your visitors can search for any content type including custom fields. The best part is you can create separate search engines, each with their own settings. This is especially great if your website includes an online store and blog at the same time. Simply create one search for blog posts and another for WooCommerce products.
Features that make Site Search 360 the best WordPress search plugin:
- Smart semantic search
- Instant results with autocompleted suggestions
- Analytics to help you get more from your search
- Simple integration of your choice: JavaScript code snippet, API or plugin
- Cross-domain search support
- Works on any website, with any CMS
As its name suggests, Ajax Search Lite provides users with user-friendly Ajax live search. This plugin enables search in almost any website aspect. From search in post and pages to search in custom post types such as WooCommerce products, Events, Portfolio items, and more. Also, Ajax Search Lite supports search in title, description, excerpt, categories, tags and custom fields. To provide you with detailed insights about your website visitors, this plugin integrates Google analytics toolset. The plugin is known for its clean interface. Plus, it comes bundled with 8 built in templates that can fit the needs of different website types. As for the user-experience, Ajax Search Lite also shines. Thanks to its smooth animations and great responsiveness, users will enjoy better-looking search engine.
Features that make Ajax Search Lite the best WordPress search plugin:
- Search in posts and pages
- Search in custom post types
- Search in title, description, excerpt, categories and tags and custom fields
- Automatic search replacement
- 8 built-in templates + options for color adjustments
Ajax Search Pro is considered to be the best live search engine plugin for WordPress. This easy-to-customize, feature-rich plugin is active on over 40,000 sites. The plugin is packed with 60+ customizable themes you can use to fine-tune the search experience. For example, you can include the featured image from your content in the results list. In other words, Ajax Search Pro will make sure your every search form looks beautiful while providing users with smooth, precise search experience. Included with this plugin are all the essential features to improve your website search. For starters, this plugin integrates custom field and radio button category filters. Additionally, it’s compatible with a variety of page builders including WPBakery Page builder, Divi Page Builder and Elementor. Ajax Search Pro comes with caching, keyword suggestion and keyword highlighting functionalities, meaning you will have unlimited search features at your disposal. Finally, the plugin is compatible with Google Analytics so you can get insights about your website visitors’ behavior.
Features that make Ajax Search Pro the best WordPress search plugin:
- 70+ pre-defined fully customizable themes
- Adds Ajax live search to WordPress
- Unique search results templates
- Lots of customization options
- Index and search media attachments, including PDF, CSV, DOC
- Google Analytics Integration module
- Scroll-to-results option
When it comes to website search, Relevanssi is a good option only if your hosting setup supports a large amount of space. This plugin requires hundreds of megabytes. Developers of this plugin say you can even triple the size of your wp_post database table after the installation.
Other than that, Relevanssi will both enable better search results and present them in a professional style. This WordPress search plugin is the right choice if you want to enable search results that can be sorted in the order of relevance. Also, your website visitors can easily search for phrases with quotes, comments, tags, categories and custom fields. Another great functionality of this search engine is fuzzy matching. With it, you can be sure users will get a better search experience every time. The plugin also supports bbPress.
Relevanssi has a free version at WordPress.org. On the other hand, the premium version starts at $99 for a one-year license or $349 for a lifetime license.
Features that make Relevanssi the best WordPress search plugin:
- Search results sorted in the order of relevance, not by date.
- Fuzzy matching: match partial words, if complete words don’t match.
- Search for phrases with quotes, for example “search phrase”
- Search comments, tags, categories and custom fields
- Multisite friendly
- bbPress support
The great thing about this plugin is the fact it integrates into the native WordPress search system, so you can set it up hassle-free. This means you can use the regular Search widget. Another possibility is to upgrade any other search feature incorporated with your theme. The best part is SearchWP will automatically start working with the existing search forms and results templates. Moreover, SearchWP gives you complete freedom to pick the extensions you want to use. Also, you can create separate search engines, each with their unique settings. This means you can have one search for blog posts, and another for products in your online store. In addition, SearchWP includes PDF search module meaning your search results can include results from within PDF files.
In the end, the plugin integrates with other popular plugins, including WooCommerce, bbPress, Easy Digital Downloads, WP Job Manager, and many more.
Features that make SearchWP the best WordPress search plugin:
- Search ecommerce products & orders
- Custom field data
- PDF & document content
- Unique visitors insights
- Integrates with WooCommerce, bbPress, Easy Digital Downloads
Let’s Sum Up
Although search functionality isn’t the best feature when it comes to WordPress, you can always boost it thanks to various WordPress search plugins. This will make sure your visitors can find the content they’re looking for with ease and without any distractions. And the best part of all is you can even customize each element to fit your website design style or brand character perfectly.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
