7 Best WordPress Search Plugins for Better Site Search

Do you want to add WordPress search plugins to your website?

We all know that the default WordPress search feature is quite limited. However, many site search plugins can help you enhance the basic search functionality.

In this post, we will show the best WordPress search plugins for better site search and user experience.

Why Use A WordPress Search Plugin?

WordPress includes an in-built search feature; however, it is quite limited and not particularly good at finding relevant content.

If you’re creating a new WordPress website or blog, you may not require a more powerful search feature right away.

However, as you add more content, you will want to make it easier for users to find articles or products. Many people depend solely on SEO best practices, expecting that users would find them through search engines.

Including a site search benefits users who are already on your website. For example, they may be looking for an older post that they did not bookmark or a specific product on your online stores.

Site search keeps users on your website longer, increases engagement, and leads to increased conversions and sales.

The good news is that various WordPress search plugins can assist you in accomplishing this. Some of these plugins are designed for specific uses, such as WooCommerce product search, while others improve the search experience across your website.

Features to Look For in WordPress Search Plugin

Below are some features you should consider when selecting a search plugin for your website.

1. Fast and Accurate Search

Users may leave your website if it takes too long to find what they’re looking for. Your search plugin should offer quick loading speeds so that your users are not bored. Similarly, the search system should deliver accurate results.

2. Visibility

Your search bar should be easily accessible to your users. Visitors who visit your website should be able to quickly see the search box. If your search bar is not visible, visitors might think you don’t have one and leave.

3. Phrase Searching

Most of your visitors won’t enter the exact name of your blog article or product in the search box. As a result, your search plugin should understand the phrases users use to give the best results.

4. Concise and Relevant Results

When a user searches for something on your website, your search plugin should return relevant results. If you have an e-commerce site, all necessary product information should be visible.

5. Proper Sorting and Filters

When it comes to limiting search results, proper sorting and filtering are crucial. These features make it easier for your website’s users to find what they’re looking for. Not only can well-designed sorting and filters limit search results, but they also provide your users with a method to interact with your site.

6. Search Logs

Search logs are an important feature of search plugins. You can learn more about your visitors by tracking what they search for on your website. Search logs can help you with this approach. When you know what they want, you can better meet their requirements.

7. Search Bar Designs

The search plugin you choose should have numerous search bar designs to choose from or a customizable search bar. It will ensure that the search engine fits the rest of your WordPress website design and that everything is consistent.

8. Price

There are free and paid search plugins available, with most premium plugins being subscription-based. When doing your search, consider your budget and whether choosing a premium option will save you money in the long run.

7 Best WordPress Search Plugins

If you’re looking for the best WordPress search plugin, here are our top picks. This list includes premium and free plugins suitable for many WordPress sites.

1. SearchWP – Best WordPress Search Plugin

SearchWP is the top WP search plugin on the market. It’s straightforward to use and quickly returns accurate search results.

You may search for search phrases in post or page titles, content, slugs, categories, tags, taxonomies, post excerpts, and even comments. Furthermore, you can influence the search algorithm by assigning a weight to different content types ranging from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest).

Once you activate the plugin, it automatically scans your content and replaces WordPress’s default search feature. It also works smoothly with popular WordPress themes, custom themes, and WordPress page builders – no coding is required.

Top Features:

• Search everything, such as product details, advanced custom fields, shortcodes, custom post types, and more.
• Integrates with popular WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, bbPress, Advanced Custom Fields, etc.
• Keywords stemming for better search results.
• Ajax Live Search function to show results instantly without loading the web page.
• Log searches to learn what visitors search for.
• Index content of PDF, Office, and text documents stored in your WordPress Media Library.
• Option to highlight search query in search results.

Pricing:

SearchWP plan starts from $99 per year for a single site license.

2. Ivory Search – Advanced Search Plugin

Ivory Search is a freemium search plugin that may be used to enhance the native WordPress search. It’s one of the top free WordPress search plugins, and the premium version is still far less expensive than most alternatives.

It allows you to create several custom search forms. Because each form can have its own custom search settings, allowing you to create dynamic forms for different areas of your website.

Additionally, the plugin allows you to use shortcodes to show these search forms across different pages of your website.

Google Analytics is integrated with Ivory Search. If you enable the feature and have Google Analytics installed on your site, you may track search activities as category, action, and label events.

Top Features:

• Compatible with the default WordPress search feature.
• Create unlimited search forms, each with its own unique settings.
• Search using Ajax search.
• You can track searches using Google Analytics.
• Integration with popular plugins like WooCommerce, bbPress, etc.
• Supports multilingual search.
• Fuzzy matching and keyword stemming.

Pricing:

Ivory Search is a freemium plugin. You can download the free version from the WordPress.org plugin directory. However, the Premium version starts at $19.99 per year for a single site license.

3. Ajax Search Lite – Free WordPress Live Search Plugin

Ajax Search Lite is a free search plugin. It replaces the default search function with an AJAX-powered search form – a live search bar that improves your site visitors’ content navigation experience.

Ajax Search Lite’s best feature is that it displays results as the user types a query in the search field. Additionally, it features Google’s autocomplete and keyword suggestion features.

The plugin’s search features are not limited to posts and pages. But, It also supports custom fields, custom post kinds, excerpts, descriptions, categories, and more.

Ajax Search Lite also has excellent animations and is mobile-optimized.

Top Features:

• Search posts, pages, custom post types, titles, descriptions, excerpts, categories, and tags.
• Custom filter boxes for categories and post types.
• WPML and QtranslateX compatible.
• Eight built-in templates + options for color adjustments.
• Fully ajax powered.
• Google analytics integration.
• Mobile friendly.

Pricing:

Ajax Search Lite is available for free on the WordPress.org plugin repository.

4. FiboSearch – Best WooCommerce Search Plugin

FiboSearch is the best WooCommerce search plugin. It allows users to perform searches on your WooCommerce site and instantly gets the results using Ajax without reloading the page.

This WordPress search filter plugin provides an advanced product SKU search with category and tag filtering. You can also include your search form on any product page or category.

Furthermore, it performs searches based on product titles, descriptions, and categories.

The plugin may seamlessly integrate into your WordPress theme and is mobile device optimized. You can use a shortcode or search widget to include the plugin in WordPress.

Top Features:

• Built for WooCommerce stores.
• Search by product title, SKU, and description.
• Live search suggestions – shoppers see results as soon as they start typing.
• Embed search forms with a shortcode or WordPress widget.
• Support for WooCommerce search results page and Google Analytics.

Pricing:

The base plugin is free. However, the Pro version starts from $49 per year with additional features.

5. Better Search – Best Site Search Plugin

Better Search is a free search plugin that enhances the default WordPress search engine with a strong search engine. It increases search speed and returns relevant results to the post’s title and content.

In addition to posts, this search plugin can also search via pages and other custom post types. It includes many options that allow you to modify the search output. You can give either the title or the content more importance. Similarly, you can customize the plugin by adding your own CSS styles.

The Better Search plugin has filters and actions that let advanced searchers quickly expand the plugin’s feature set. Additionally, it monitors search activity and shows a heatmap of the most common searches.

Another exciting feature of this search plugin is that it incorporates search results into your theme without using custom search templates. Furthermore, Better Search is compatible with caching plugins such as WP-Super-Cache and W3 Total Cache. It is also translation-ready, making it a better option for a free plugin.

Top Features:

• Seamless integration into your WordPress theme.
• Relevancy-based searching.
• Works with cache plugins such as WP-Super-Cache and W3 Total Cache.
• Search heatmap of the most popular searches.
• Translation ready.

Pricing:

Free.

6. WP Extended Search – Lightweight WP Search Plugin

WP Extended Search, as the name suggests, extends the functionality of the default WordPress search feature.

It is lightweight and simple to use. You may activate the plugin and configure its settings with a single click.

It allows you to create an unlimited number of search forms and allows you to choose which options to include. You can add post types, author names, taxonomies, metadata, and more.

Additionally, you can even exclude a particular post from the results page.

Top Features:

• Search in category, tags, or custom taxonomies.
• Include or exclude any public post type.
• Works with WooCommerce product SKU, Attributes, and custom fields search.
• Create unlimited search settings with custom search forms.
• Translation ready and compatible with WPML.

Pricing:

Free.

7. Relevanssi – WordPress Search Plugin

Relevanssi is an advanced WordPress search plugin that replaces the default WordPress search with a more effective search engine. It is jam-packed with features and customizable options.

This robust and highly effective plugin supports fuzzy matching and phrase searches. It also allows you to change the weight of titles, tags, and comments. To simplify things for your visitors, it also highlights the search term in the search results.

Additionally, rather than ranking the search results by date, this WordPress search plugin does it based on relevancy. Thus, your visitors see content that matches their search terms or other parameters. It also allows users to type OR and AND queries and offers “Did you mean?” suggestions, just like Google.

This fantastic plugin supports multisite, is bbPress compatible, and is translation ready. You can also use Search Throttling to boost performance if you have a larger database. You can also disable the indexing of specific content using a simple filter hook. Relevanssi will also handle log queries and display the most popular or recent ones.

Top Features:

• The search results were sorted by relevancy rather than date.
• Google-like “Did you mean?” suggestion.
• Log queries and show the most popular and recent queries with no hits.
• Search result throttling for improved search on large databases.
• Option to use OR and AND queries on searches.
• Multisite compatibility.

Pricing:

Relevanssi is a freemium plugin. You can download the free version from the WordPress.org plugin directory. However, the Premium version starts at $99 per year.

Which WordPress Search Plugin is the Best For You?

Search plugins make it simpler for website visitors to search for anything on your site. While the default WordPress search feature may not be up to par, all 7 WordPress search plugins discussed above can be excellent alternatives.

Although each of the search plugins discussed above has unique features and functionality, we recommend that you use SearchWP.

It has a great set of features, good search results quality, and is reasonably priced for small businesses. It comes with a free live search addon and a WooCommerce extension, which greatly enhances your WooCommerce product search capability.

We hope this post on the seven best search plugins helps you to choose the one for your website. If you want to learn more about different plugins, read the following articles on your blog:

• 25 Best WooCommerce Plugins To Boost Your Sales
• Best eCommerce Plugins for WordPress (Free & Paid)
• Best Membership Plugins for WordPress

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