7 Best WordPress Search Plugins

Although the search function that comes native to WordPress is certainly not bad, there may come a time when you want more from the search bar on your WordPress website. Luckily, there’s plenty of WordPress search plugins that can do this for you with virtually no fuss. Here’s a list from us at WP Carers to help you choose: 7 Best WordPress Search Plugins.

 

1. SearchWP – WordPress Search Plugin

This is a custom search plugin for WordPress that’s easy to use with very accurate search results. SearchWP allows searches for keywords in post title, content, slug, categories, tags, taxonomies, excerpt and comments. Upon activation, the plugin automatically indexes your content and replaces the WordPress default search feature. Additional features include automatic updates, multiple search engines, many extensions and statistics.

 

2. Swiftype Search – Best WordPress Search Plugins

Swiftype is a site search service available in both free and paid versions. This plugin indexes documents and ensures faster functioning than the default WordPress search. It also stores user searches for useful analytics and can show you what users searched for. Additional features include autocomplete, weights, spellcheck, synonyms and faceted search.

 

3. Category Wise Search – WordPress Search Plugins

This plugin allows you to add a category drop down menu to your WordPress search bar, allowing users to narrow down their search to a specific category. Users can also choose to exclude categories from the search if they wish. A unique feature with Category Wise is that it can be added to your site’s sidebar using a widget.

 

4. Simply Exclude – WordPress Advanced Search Plugin

Simply Exclude is a great plugin that allows you to exclude content based on your selected criteria. This is excellent if there are certain things on your website you don’t want to pop up when users search. You can choose to exclude based on taxonomies, post types or users.

 

5. Relevanssi – WP Search Plugin

This is probably the best-known and most popular WordPress search plugin with over 80,000 active installs reported. Relevanssi has a fantastic free version, but you can choose to go premium for $40. The plugin logs user queries for useful search analytics and has a cool “fuzzy matching” feature which means the search engine only searches for partial words for increased relevance. Additional features include exclude posts/pages/tags/categories from results, autocomplete suggestions and AND or OR search modifiers.

 

6. Search Everything – WordPress Search Plugin

Search Everything is a free plugin that removes the default WordPress search function and replaces it with a more powerful option. This plugin allows for an improved search by enabling advanced search features, such as integrating search features on any template page. It is easy to install and configure and can search attachments, comments, custom fields, tags, experts, pages and more. A great feature is the option to exclude pages from your search.

 

7. Custom Search by BestWebSoft – Best WordPress Search Plugins

This is a brilliant plugin made by the folks at BestWebSoft which is free to download. Custom Search is easy to install, but you must create a custom post type for search capability. The plugin supports 4 languages (English, Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian) and includes technical support if you ever run into trouble.