WordPress is undoubtedly one of the leading platforms for bloggers and entrepreneurs seeking for an efficient way to set up and manage their business website. Statistically it is the most dominating CMS platform in the world these days. As every coin has two sides, WordPress has also some limitations such like its internal search capabilities aren’t as good as it should be.
Let’s Find Out How WordPress Internal Search Works
Search is the key feature of a site, especially in case when you are running a website having hundreds of thousands of pages or posts.
When users make a search in WP blog, they will be provided with the search result in chronological manner and not in the form of “most popular” or alphabetically. And the search result that is retrieved will be displayed in chronological order from most recent to oldest which means that if your post displays old information, users will have to scroll down until they reach to the newest information. Forcing users scrolling down to get the new information can often cause frustration and make them say good bye to your website for forever. It’s against best practice for user friendliness.
Second problem with WordPress internal search is that, it will search for post content only. However it is possible to make search for comments and pages. In a nutshell, you can easily help your visitors find exactly what they have been seeking for through the default search functionality but if your website has several articles and you publish numbers of articles in a day, then certainly your website needs an enhanced search feature which can fetch qualified search results.
Well, luckily there are several search plugins available that extend WordPress default search functionality to another level.
Following are the few best Search Plugins tested and installed in most of our clients websites here at KGN Technologies.
1. Search Everything
With more than 80,000 active installations, Search Everything tops the list of WordPress Search Plugins. As the name suggests, this plugin will help your website users to find everything right from pages to custom fields, date, excerpts, comments, tags and much more.
Normally, it helps in enhancing WordPress default search functionality without having to manipulate any of your site pages. With this plugin you can link the any search result to post you are writing.
2. Relevanssi
Second best and worth exploring search plugin for WordPress website is Relevanssi with more than 80,000 downloads. This plugin replaces the WordPress default search functionality with better search engine – that comes with lots of features and configurable options further strengthening website search.
Best thing about this plugin is it searches out the result based on relevancy rather than by the date. It even allows you to match the partial words if complete words don’t match. Relevanssi enables search for comments, custom fields, tags, titles and much more.
3. Search & Filter
This is simple search and filter WordPress search plugin that comes with advanced search in addition to filtering capability in order to refine search result. It has been download more than 10,000 times and helps your users to search results based on category, custom taxonomy, post type and many more. The best thing about this plugin is that, it uses AJAX to display search results – no more page reloading.