Top 5 WordPress Site Search Plugins

WordPress basically offers a search feature, but this is pretty basic and has limited features. That's why it's more effective to use a powerful search plugin to improve the user experience of your WordPress website.

Fortunately, several WordPress on-site search plugins can circumvent these limitations. It also offers customization options to give your website a great look and feel.

Before moving on to the list, let's discuss why you need search plugins on your WordPress website and what you should look for in a search plugin.

So let's start!

Why Should You Use Site Search Plugins on Your WordPress Website?

You may wonder why you need to install a WordPress on-site search plugin when there is a built-in plugin in the system. The answer to this question is that the default search function is quite inadequate.

The default search system offers slow search results with almost zero flexibility. On the other hand, WordPress on-site search plugins are fast and provide many benefits for your WordPress website.

First, these plugins make it easy for your visitors to find certain information. For example, if you sell video games on your website, you can sort them into genres with several games under each category. In this case, it will be difficult for visitors to manually find a particular game.

Fortunately, these add-ons make it easy for users to search for their favorite video game by simply typing what they want to search for in the search box.

In addition, on-site search plugins help you monitor what your users are searching for with the search logs feature so that you can see the terms and pages your users are searching for.

What Are The Features You Should Look For In WordPress Site Search Plugins?

You can review the following features to find the best WordPress onsite search plugins for your website :

1. Ratings and Reviews

The most important thing to consider before installing a search plugin to your website is to check reviews and ratings. 

If a search plugin doesn't have high ratings and positive reviews, it's better for you not to install it on your website. Because add-ons with negative reviews and low ratings may not fully meet your needs. So basically, you need to look for addons with at least 4-star ratings and good reviews.

Similarly, you can search for the add-on you want on Google or other search engines and analyze the reviews of third-party websites about it. These reviews on multiple websites can give you a clear idea of ​​the functionality and performance of search plugins.

2. Functionality and Features

After reviews and ratings, the next thing you should check is your plugin's features and functionality. When it comes to looking for plugins, you should look for the following features:

2.1 Fast and Precise Search

If visitors take too long to find the words they're looking for, they'll walk away from your website. That's why your site search plugin should provide fast loading speeds so your users don't get bored. Likewise, the search system should return accurate results.

2.2 Visibility

Your search bar should be easily visible to your users. When your visitors visit your website, they need to find the search box quickly. If your search bar isn't showing up properly, your visitors may think you don't have this feature at all and decide it's not worth the effort to find it.

2.3 Phrase Search

Most of your visitors don't type your blog post's full name or product name into the search box. As a result, your search plugin should interpret the phrases used to get the best results.

2.4 Short and Relevant Results

Your search plugin should show relevant results when your user searches for something on your website. If you have an e-commerce site, all product-related information should also be visible. For example, if your user searches for a specific product, the search plugin should display the product image, rating, price, and description.

2.5 Speed

The search plugin should be fast and show results quickly. Likewise, it should not slow down your website.

2.6 Convenient Sorting and Filters

Proper sorting and filters play a vital role when it comes to narrowing down search results. These features make it easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for on your website. Not only does it narrow down search results, well-designed rankings and filters also give your users a way to interact with your site.

2.7 Call Logs

One of the important features of call plugins is call logs. That's why you can better understand your visitors if you monitor what they are searching for on your website. Call logs help you in this process. Once you know what your visitors want, you can meet their needs much more effectively.

2.8 Search Bar Designs

The onsite search plugin you choose should include several search bar designs to choose from or have a customizable search bar. This ensures that the search engine matches the rest of your WordPress website design and that everything is consistent.

3. Updates and Maintenance

When searching for a plugin, you should know that the plugin needs to be updated frequently. Frequent updates ensure functionality and performance are not compromised.

If you find that the last update of your desired search plugin was more than 6 months ago, or if you find that there are any irregularities in the updates, you should consider switching to another plugin.

Irregular updates can also mean that the plugin poses a security risk. An outdated plugin mostly used by hackers to breach your website and inject malicious code.

Similarly, if you install a search plugin from a third-party website, check the plugin's official site to see its support policy. If you encounter any problems with the add-on, check if you can contact the support team for appropriate customer support.

Top 5 WordPress Site Search Plugins

Below are the 5 best free and premium WordPress in-site search plugins available on the market :

1. SearchWP

SearchWP is a popular WordPress on-site search plugin designed and built to fix WordPress searches. WordPress tries to find content that is ignored by the local search engine.

This premium plugin is the best and most comprehensive plugin on the WordPress market. When enabled, it automatically indexes your content and replaces the default search system in WordPress.

It allows you to search your website directly on Google. This plugin comes with more plugins that offer vague matches, search term highlighting, and term synonyms. It also allows you to exclude certain search content from search results.

Advanced feature of the plugin; Allows searching for keywords in title, content, information categories, tags, quotes, testimonials and comments. 

SearchWP integrates perfectly with different popular WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, Easy Digital , bbPress, WP Job Manager, Advanced Custom Fields and more. It also integrates with custom metadata and documents such as PDFs, texts, and office documents.

SearchWP also allows you to display some unique information about your visitors so that you can understand and meet their needs.

2. Ajax Search Pro

Ajax Search Pro is among the best on-site search plugins in the WordPress market due to features like caching, keyword suggestion and autocomplete, keyword highlighting page builder support and much more.

Ajax Search Pro starts working as soon as your users start typing keywords into the search bar without spending extra time refreshing the page. It also saves you time if you forget the keyword of your search or don't want to type it all in. It then tries to match keywords and produce results.

It supports posts, pages, and all kinds of custom post types, and WooCommerce, Jigoshop, and many other plugins.

Also, search has built-in libraries with image processing compatibility. It can easily parse content, custom fields, excerpts or just display the featured image of your web page.

3. Ivory Search

Ivory Search is another popular WordPress on-site search plugin available in both free and premium versions. 

The Ivory Search plugin improves the default WordPress search and also allows you to create new custom search forms. Using this plugin you can create an unlimited number of search forms and configure them separately to perform different types of searches on your website.

The plugin allows you to show custom search forms in different parts of your website, including header, footer, sidebar, widget areas, pages, posts, navigation or menu, custom post types and more.

Also, this plugin integrates with many popular WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, Polylang, and bbPress. The premium version of Ivory Search provides some great functionality like searching for specific author posts and excluding posts with a specific post status.

Like many other search plugins, it also supports keyword derivation for better search results.

4. Relevance

Relevanssi is another useful WordPress on-site search plugin that replaces the standard WordPress search with a better search engine . It comes packed with many features and configurable options.

This powerful and super effective plugin allows phrase search. Likewise, it even lets you adjust the weight of titles, tags, and comments. 

On top of that, this WordPress search plugin sorts the search result by relevance rather than date. So your visitors will have content that matches their keywords or criteria.

5. Better Search

Better Search is a free WordPress on-site search plugin that replaces the default WordPress search engine with a powerful one . It improves search speed and gives search results relevant to the title and content of the post.

This search plugin can search not only posts but also pages and other custom post types. It comes with options that allow you to customize the search output easily. You can assign more weight to the title or content. Likewise, you can even enter your own CSS styles to customize the plugin.

Another great feature of this on-site search plugin is that it integrates search results into your theme without custom search templates. It also works with caching plugins like Better Search, WP-Super-Cache, and W3 Total Cache and comes translation ready. This makes it a better choice for a free plugin.