Top 10 WordPress Search Plugins to Improve Your Site’s Search

Got a WordPress website with hundreds of thousands of blog posts that date back for years? Well, the best thing you can do to improve user experience on your website is to render a powerful search feature that allows them to find particular posts on your website. It is not always easy for your visitors to find what they are seeking based on the standard WordPress search feature. It is always recommended to offer an updated solution, especially if your website renders several posts or products per day.Fortunately, WordPress offers a various plugin that can drastically improve your website's search functionality. In this post, we are going to discuss the top 10 to supercharge your search functionality.

1. Custom Search by BestWebSoft

Custom Search by BestWebSoft is an easy to use and powerful WordPress Search plugin that immediately improves WordPress standard search functionality. The plugin enables to integrate a custom post type. It is a great solution for those who are looking to extend the search functionality but do not want to invest their time in customization.

Additional features of Custom Search by BestWebSoft:

• 100% fully responsive
• Offers easy customization to allow you to change the look and feel of your website
• Add selected custom post types to the search.

2. Relevanssi

Relevanssi is one of the most popular WordPress search plugins that replaces the standard WordPress search functionality with an improved search engine. The plugin comes with various configurable options and features. It renders the better presentation of results and better presentation. Relevanssi comes in two versions – free and premium one. A premium version comes with additional features such as multisite support.

Additional benefits of Relevanssi

• Search comments, tags, categories and custom fields.
• Search results sorted in the order of relevance, not by date.
• Offers Fuzzy matching, which means if complete words don't match, it matches partial words
• Search for sentences with quotes, for example, "phrase search".
• Highlight keywords in the documents when a visitor clicks through search results.

3. Better Search

If you are looking for improved functionality for your website, Better Search is an ideal choice for you. It gives your users search results that are relevant to both the content and the title of the post. The plugin replaces the default search feature with the faster and improves search functionality. Better Search allows you to tailor the output. As an instance, you can put greater weight on the content and the title.

Additional Benefits of Better Search

• Search results based on relevancy or date.
• Offers support for natural language search or boolean
• Highlights keywords in the results list.
• Comes integrated with cache plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.
• Comes with a profanity filter

4. Dave's WordPress Live Search

Dave's WordPress Live Search integrates a live search feature into your WordPress website. It continuously queries WordPress as users type keywords into the search bar, seeking search results that match what the visitor has searched. The live search strategy means that a majority of users will get the results they are seeking before they even finish typing their query (just like Google search).

Additional Features of Dave's WordPress Live Search

• Saves a lot of time of the user
• Renders the closely matched results
• Integrates with Relevanssi for enhanced live search results

5. Ajax Search Lite

Ajax Search Lite is an amazing WordPress plugin that performs the search without refreshing the page, thanks to Ajax. In simpler words, it offers a live search. The responsive live search engine boosts your user experience by rendering a user-friendly and intuitive Ajax powered search form.

Additional features of Ajax Search Lite

• Caches images for faster response time
• Qtranslate and WPML compatible
• Comes with 8 inbuilt templates
• Category and post exclusions
• Frontend search settings boxes
• Comes with 40+ options on the backend
• Retina ready vectorized SVG and CSS3 icons

6. Custom Google Search

Custom Google Search is a well-written WordPress plugin that allows you to substitute the standard WordPress search with a Google-powered search. The plugin is compatible with BuddyPress and Multisite and is presently being translated into 7 different languages including Dutch and Korean.

Additional features of Custom Google Search

• Comes with inbuilt widget that integrates a search box to your sidebar
• Has the capability to restrict the search to one or multiple websites
• Comes with Custom styles, which make the search look more attractive.
• Offers various ways to show search results – in your sidebar, in a pop-up or on a search page

7. Category Wise Search

Category Wise Search WordPress plugin, as the name suggests, enables you to add a category drop down to the WordPress Search. The plugin allows visitors to narrow down their search to a particular category. Category Wise Search also enables you to eliminate categories from the search, which can easily be added using a widget for your sidebar.

Additional features of Search by Category

• Exclude categories in search category field.
• Set default category.
• Exclude categories with a child in search category field.
• Search post category wise.

8. Swiftype Search

The Swiftype Search is a beautiful search solution for WordPress website owners. The plugin substitutes the standard WordPress search with a more relevant and better search engine. Swiftype Search also renders you a comprehensive insight into what your visitors are looking for, so you get to know which keywords to use when tailoring your search engine results.

Additional features of Swiftype Search

• Comes with a user-friendly and intuitive dashboard
• Equipped with full-featured developer API
• Renders a powerful analytics
• Integrated with a drag and drop feature to manage search results and see the changes in real-time.

9. Search Everything

Search Everything is yet another popular WordPress search plugin that enhances the search capabilities of a WordPress powered website. The plugin basically enhances the default search functionality without changing any of the template pages. Search Everything can be configured to custom fields, tags, comments, drafts, attachments, excerpts and search pages and also lets you define your own search highlight style.

Additional features of Search Everything

• Search Highlighting, Every page, Every tag and every category
• Lets you exclude specific pages and posts
• Search Custom Taxonomies ( new )
• Does not Search password protected pages
• Lets you also search every Comment
• Search Every Attachment (post type, not the content itself - check FAQ)
• Exclude Categories from search

10. JP Omnisearch

JP Omnisearch is considered as the ultimate WordPress search plugin that searches by post dates, post types, authors, categories, tags, taxonomies, post meta and custom fields. The plugin enables you to search and filter your products, custom posts and posts by any number of arguments enabling your visitors to conveniently find what they are seeking on your website.

Additional features of JP Omnisearch

• Easily changes the main query, so showing your results is simple
• Highly customizable and 100% fully responsive
• Automatically adds a search box that allows you to search various different things

11. Profi Search Form

Profi Search form is a powerful WordPress plugin for those who run online stores. This search plugin is highly customizable and WooCommerce compatible. The core feature of Profi Search Form is its filter option. It provides you ample of filter options to refine your search results.Let's have a look on the features this incredible WordPress search Plugin has to offer,

• It highlights the searched text in the content.
• It also offers a filter specifically for different price range. This feature also works on different postmeta values such as a number of persons, population etc.
• If you have any geographical blog, you can search places on the map as well. This is an ideal function for websites of real estate business.
• You can refine the search by customizing your search via categories.

12. 12YoLink Search

Yolink Search is very easy and fast to install and activate. It is well known for its accurate searches. Apart from this, they also offer cloud service which eventually results in providing enhanced website performance. Let's discuss some of its highly interactive features,

• It provides better results based on relevancy.
• It enables your visitor to search for every post and page of your WordPress website.
• To provide better context, this search plugin also highlights the search text in the content.
• It supports single and multisite feature of WordPress.
• It also provides related posts section after the blog post.
• It also can search easily on Google Docs, EasyBib, Evernote, Twitter, and Facebook etc.

13. SearchWP

SearchWP is the best of the best search plugin for WordPress websites. The functionalities offered by this WordPress plugins are impeccable and outstanding as well.Allow me to introduce you to the features of this incredible plugin,

• It is so powerful as it can search any phrase of text even in pdf and office file.
• You can configure multiple search engine arranging each with your own preferences.
• With this plugin, you can easily search for any product detail, shortcode output or custom field.
• This plugin also facilitates you look for stats regarding what your visitors might be searching.
• Incredibly compatible with WooCommerce.
• It also a great tool for Keyword stemming.
• Great integration with bbPress.
• You can also include or exclude content from the search engine easily.