6 Best WordPress Search Plugins to Improve Your Site Search

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Creating and publishing your WordPress website or blog is easier with an appropriate set of plugins.

These WordPress plugins are simple and quick to install while enabling you to add more features and smooth functioning of your website.

An outdated and low-quality search experience may affect the rankings in the Google search tool.

To make it simple, WordPress plugins with better clarity and classification have the potential to increase the number of visitors on your website, increase sales, offer better customer experience, and deliver new features.

WordPress plugins also facilitate enhanced search functionality, reducing the time and effort during the search.

Key Points to Cover Your Search for Plugins

Accuracy – Visitors need to find out the best possible answer to their queries when visiting your website. The content searched by the visitors might show outside the default WordPress index. Hence, you need to choose a plugin that provides the exact content and images as per the query. The customized post types, text documents, legible media are not added in the native version of WordPress.
Speed – To make your website or blog to run smoothly, you need a plugin that has speed. Too much time can make visitors feel stir-crazy. Timing is crucial if you own a large website that effectively finds out the search results as soon as possible.
Design – With the latest techniques and features in the market, your website can have the best enhancements like highlighting some results. Customized search plugins offer to install the results page and the search bar, respectively.
Sorting and Filtering –Sorting and filtering enable your website to find the results of the content in a few seconds. This feature is an absolute must for e-commerce sites, which helps the visitors to select an item with multiple product listings and variants.
Logs – According to the search behavior of the visitors, you can install a search plugin that has a log feature. It helps the visitors to find the content more easily.
Price –Different plugins have varied pricing. Free and subscription-based plugins both are available, most of which are paid. Do consider the pricing while selecting the premium plugins and check whether it fits into your scheme of things.

Here’s a list of the best WordPress Search Plugins to improve your site search:

1. SearchWP

SearchWP is a premium and a comprehensive option to look upon. It has become a leading search solution.

This plugin has an all-round feature promising speed, accuracy, and experience ranging from medium to small-sized sites.

SearchWP has a powerful indexing process. Product listings, custom metadata, PDF’s and even text documents stored in the media library will show the full index in the post content.

It makes the search job easier for visitors by highlighting the queries and search results.

2. Relevanssi

The native WordPress search is replaced by another more powerful plugin named Relevanssi.

This plugin has a partial implementation of the relevance algorithm for finding the results. Meaning, if the search term fails to find the exact result, it will provide the closest results to the visitor.

The results are listed by relevance, not the date of posting. This plugin is available in both versions, one is free and the other is premium.

The free version has got the capability of highlighting the results, weightage on results, exact phrase searching, and bbPress integration.

The free version of Relevanssi replaces the WordPress searching algorithm without substituting the interface.

The search conduct still can be done through the native search module, though you can customize by yourself or a theme based upon your preferences.

Best Plugins:

3. Ajax Search

This is another powerful tool that exhibits the results as per the typed words. You don’t need to navigate to a different page for your queries.

It has a technology that utilizes Javascript and XML for flashing the results without having to refresh the web page.

Ajax Search plugin allows experiencing a “live” search. The possibility of providing more context to results, the real-time search results are accompanied by image thumbnails.

Ajax Search is also flexible for mobile visitors. After installation, you simply need to add the search feature to the pages with a widget or shortcode, and can easily ditch the default WordPress.

4. Ivory Search

For visitors who are comfortable with the developmental aspects, you can try Ivory Search.

Customized search forms make the search possible, and you can also fine-tune as per your liking. As many as form elements can be made as you like and it can be placed anywhere on the web page.

After the plugin has been installed, it offers a wide range of search forms to replace the default WordPress tool.

5. Swiftype Site Search

It is a highly advanced WordPress search plugin. Similarly to the list of options, it searches extensively the website content and documents.

This plugin runs on algorithms and rankings, without creating a heavy load on your web server. As a result, it boosts up in the search process while navigating through large and content-heavy sites.

6. Better Search

This tool has a more powerful option. The premium version of Better Search doesn’t provide the same value as its a paid option, whereas the free version will guide the visitor through different posts and contents.

The priority content type defined by the visitor will show the results correspondingly.

This plugin combines with your WordPress theme with customized CSS. Search results are presented through their relevance and work well with WordPress caching plugins.

Smaller websites with a default search engine in WordPress is sufficient, whereas, in the case of larger websites, it becomes difficult to put up the exact content the visitor is looking for.

The limitations of WordPress get an improved relevance of search results allowing the visitor to have control over the results.

The expansion of search plugins enables the visitor to narrow down the results within various taxonomies, customized post types, and custom fields.

The option of filtering also offers visitors to consider the best results with much ease.