- What Makes a Good Website Search Functionality?
- 10+ Top-Rated WordPress Search Engine Plugins
- Must-Have WordPress Plugins
- Wrapping Up
These days, having a well-functioning search system is an essential part of a website. No matter if you manage a blog, commercial, or business web source, people visiting it should have a way to find the information they are looking for. Yet, it is not enough to only get a search system for the site — way more important is to design it so that it doesn’t repel visitors.
A well-designed search has a dramatic effect on your website bounce rate and SEO. And while default WordPress search function is far from good, tons of third-party WP search plugins come to the rescue.
The plugin, properly chosen, can make the website search fast, accurate, and more engaging. And if you are looking for that plugin right now, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we are going to cover the best free and paid WordPress search engine plugins designed to improve the website browsing experience for your visitors. But, before getting to the overview, let’s consider things that make a good search engine.
What Makes Good Website Search Functionality?
- Speedy and explicit search. A search engine that takes too long to process visitors’ requests, thus making them wait, is likely to push them away from the site. An effective WordPress search bar plugin will make search speedy so that no one is getting bored.
- Visible search box. The search bar should be easily distinguishable on the site to not make visitors make extra efforts to find it. It should be clear to them where it is; otherwise, they will go somewhere else.
- Search by phrases. Searching by phrases allows for narrowing down the search results and lets visitors find what they are looking for without spending much time.
- Sorting and filtering. This is another effective way to narrow down the search results because properly configured sorting and filtering lets you keep the visitors engaged with the website.
- Clear and distinct results. Upon requesting the needed information through a search engine on your website, the visitors wait to receive clear, concise, and relevant results. So, give it to them with one of the best search engine plugins.
- Search records. Search logs are something people usually underestimate. If you want to better understand what your visitors want and cater to their needs in a more targeted way, you’d better go with search logs.
Now that you know what a good search system looks like, it’s high time to take a look at the best WordPress search engine plugins.
10+ Top-Rated WordPress Search Engine Plugins
SearchWP
SearchWP is a premium WordPress searchable database plugin with an extended set of features and an intuitive user interface. The add-on ensures a straightforward and quick setup, so you can simply install and activate it with just a few clicks. With SearchWP implemented to the website, you let the visitors search through any part of the site comprising documents, custom field data, eCommerce products, and other content.
Another good thing about the plugin is that it enables search algorithms customization and provides for smooth integration with WooCommerce, bbPress, and Easy Digital Downloads. Generally, a good selection of features and a user-friendly interface makes SearchWP worth your attention.
Most Popular Features:
- Ability to use keyword stems in place of exact term matches
- Search stats and insights
- Support for advanced custom fields
- Ability to integrate multiple search engines
- PDF and office document indexing
Pricing: Standard — $99; Pro — $149; Pro Plus — $299 (depending on license volume)
Ajax Search Pro
Another search plugin popular with WordPress users is Ajax Search Pro. Because the add-on runs on Ajax, it starts returning search results as soon as visitors type in the keywords, without reloading the page. This only adds to its appeal when it comes to user experience. Ajax Search Pro comes with multiple customization options including over 60 customizable themes, Retina-ready graphics, numerous layouts for search results, etc.
This add-on has many other awesome features aimed at making the website search better.
Most Popular Features:
- Support for searching any custom post type, custom fields, taxonomy terms, WooCommerce, an events calendar, and more
- Built-in autocomplete and keyword suggestions engine
- Search filters by categories, custom fields, date, and more
- Support for WPBakery Page Builder
- Google Analytics integration
Pricing: Lifetime update and 6-month support for $36
Swiftype Site Search
Like many other WordPress search plugins in this list, Swiftype Site Search also comes fully customizable, versatile, and feature-rich. Add-on installation doesn’t require any coding knowledge, whereas an intuitive dashboard provides for fast customization using all the necessary tools available at hand. With Swiftype Site Search, you can easily create an effective and engaging search system on your website. These and other top features make the plugin one of the best in class.
Most Popular Features:
- Core search components including typo-tolerance, bigram, phrase matching, and stemming
- The most commonly used types of filters and facets
- Multilingual support
- Clickthrough tracking
- Analytics and insights
Pricing: Free for up to 50 search result customizations, single website installation, and Swiftype branding; App Search — from $49/month; Site Search — from $79/month
Relevanssi
When it comes to replacing default WordPress search, Relevanssi may come in handy. This is a great solution for everyone who wants to take full control over the website search system. You can use filters, go with fuzzy matching and search by phrases, or even assign weights to tags, titles, or comments. Among other things, Relevanssi highlights search words in previous search results and provides for implementing suggestions in “Did you mean?” style which lets visitors enjoy their browsing experience. On the whole, the plugin is found to be powerful enough due to its extensive set of features.
Most Popular Features:
- Support for multisite search
- bbPress and WooCommerce integration
- Search post categories, tags, and custom taxonomies
- Gutenberg-friendly plugin
- WPML and Polylang integration
Pricing: Free; Annual — $99; Permanent — $349
Better Search
Better Search WordPress plugin is available for free download. Intentionally designed to replace the default WP search, it consequently comes equipped with more advanced features for better speed and more relevant search results. Website visitors will be able to search through pages, posts, and custom post types to find everything they are looking for way faster. The other outstanding thing about Better Search is that it allows you to customize the output, as well as configuring results by setting the weight of title and content.
The plugin in its default mode can be seamlessly integrated with your WordPress theme, whereas advanced users have a chance to leverage extra templates, filters, and actions. For more features, consider the list below.
Most Popular Features:
- Built-in cache capability
- Heatmap displaying popular search terms on your website
- Profanity filter
- Translation-ready plugin
- Custom CSS support
Pricing: Free
Ajax Search Lite
Ajax Search Lite is a free live search add-on for WordPress powered by Ajax. This is a truly distinctive plugin designed for WP users. It comes with a responsive, clean, user-friendly, and mobile-ready interface, smooth animations, and other features. This plugin, applied to your website, lets visitors search through pages, posts, custom post types, categories, excerpts, descriptions, custom fields, etc. Ajax Search Lite is a feature-rich plugin aimed at replacing the default WordPress search for better appearance and search results.
Most Popular Features:
- Google Analytics integration
- Custom checkbox filters for categories and post types
- 5 embedded templates and color adjustment options
- Caches images for better response time
- Over 40 options for the back-end
Pricing: Free
Ivory Search
As soon as you decide to enhance the default WordPress search system, Ivory Search is the plugin to consider. Despite the advanced features the plugin provides, it remains extremely versatile and user-friendly. Not only does it allow establishing custom search forms, but the add-on also lets you create an infinite number of those forms and fine-tune them according to your needs. You can display them wherever you want on the site, be it a header, footer, sidebar, or pages, posts, and widget areas.
As you can see, the WordPress add-on gives you full control over your website search engine, whereas an extensive set of features provides for better performance.
Most Popular Features:
- WooCommerce products search
- Ability to set the order of search results
- bbPress integration
- Support for Ajax-powered search
- Multilingual support
Pricing: Starter — free; Pro — $19.99/year; Pro Plus — $49.99/year
Advanced Woo Search
From the very name of the plugin, it is clear that Advanced Woo Search is designed to serve WooCommerce-powered websites. So, applying this distinctive search add-on to your store will let your prospective customers find the needed products with no hassle. They can search through categories, content, product title, excerpts, tags, and SKUs and get the result shown with image and price. Designed with users in mind, Advanced Woo Search comes easy to use, fast, and feature-rich which makes it the best WooCommerce search plugin.
Most Popular Features:
- Support for Google Analytics
- Built-in shortcode and widget for placing search wherever you want
- Auto-sync product data
- Support for WPML, Polylang, qTranslate, WooCommerce Multilingual add-ons
- Third-party plugins support
Pricing: Free
ACF: Better Search
ACF: Better Search is a great solution to improve the performance of the default WordPress search engine. This simple yet effective plugin is designed to greatly enhance the website visitors’ search experience. But still, to ensure the add-on works properly, enable and activate Advanced Custom Fields plugin. When everything is properly set up, web users can search by text, email, text area, number, URL, and more.
ACF: Better Search is feature-rich, yet easy to use and understand which makes it more attractive to WordPress users in comparison with many other plugins.
Most Popular Features:
- Ability to enable lite mode for faster search
- Support for 10 field types
- Compatibility with Advanced Custom Fields plugin
- Search for whole phrases
- Lightweight package
Pricing: Free
Site Search 360
Site Search 360 is a feature-rich and easy to install a search engine plugin designed to work with any website. It is in high demand among everyone looking for a polished and user-friendly add-on. After implementation, you get an opportunity to configure the look and functionality of the search bar, enhance content visibility, and learn the intention behind every search query by leveraging analytics tools. Although the Site Search 360 plugin looks great right out of the box, you can still apply minor adjustments to make it fit your website design and structure. Go through the other features to find out why Site Search 360 is the one worth considering.
Most Popular Features:
- Fast indexing and fast search and suggestions
- Multilingual support
- Cross-domain search support
- Drop-in replacement
- Analytics tool for getting more out of the search
Pricing: Free with limited features; Columbo — $9/month; Holmes — $39/month; Batman — $99/month
FacetWP
FacetWP is another WordPress searchable database plugin aimed at advanced filtering. Utilizing this add-on lets you add facet search to different types of content including shop archives, recipe pages, listings, resource pages, etc. Not only can it work with most themes, but it also allows for adding search and filter facets anywhere on the page by leveraging shortcodes. Inside the pack, you will find a great number of facet types comprising checkboxes, sliders, date ranges, dropdowns, etc.
Another good thing about FacetWp is its Ajax-powered nature which provides for fast filtering without reloading the page.
Most Popular Features:
- Compatibility with Advanced Custom Fields
- WooCommerce integration with support for product attributes, variations, SKUs, and other product meta
- Third-party integrations including Beaver Builder, Polylang, SearchWP, Relevanssi, Flatsome, WP Job Manager, etc.
- Filter results by color
- Ability to use existing data for filtering
Pricing: Basic — $99/year; Professional — $249/year
Must-Have WordPress Plugins
If your visitors are sick and tired of long loading of your website, if you want your website to work more properly, better, and faster, try using the Must-Have WordPress Plugins, literally the must-have plugins pack you need for such purposes. This set contains a few plugins that can help you to customize your website, will make the loading time quite shorter, will give you the possibility to see your visitors statistics, and more interesting things! So, let’s find out what plugins you get with this cool set!
What’s included:
- SEO optimization plugin. This plugin helps you to get higher rankings from the search engine machines, so your website will have higher chances to be seen by more Internet users;
- Google Analytics plugin. This plugin helps you to track the visitors’ activity on your website, to know what they do and need more, so you can optimize it for better user experience;
- Advanced site editor. This great plugin can help you to edit your posts, articles quite faster and save your time;
- Image optimizer. This plugin helps you to make the images size smaller so that the page loading will take less time and your visitors won’t leave your website because of its long loading. Quite useful plugin, isn’t it?
- Sitemap plugin. This plugin will generate the sitemap.xml document, so when you make some changes in posts, articles, when you update and change them, these changes will be shown right away in Google and other search engine machines;
- Login page URL change plugin. This plugin will help you to protect your login page URL on better conditions so that hackers won’t be able to attack it;
- Admin panel customization plugin. With the help of this plugin, you’ll be able to customize the admin panel, admin bar, etc. and do it quicker, comfier, and with fewer questions and issues.
These were the plugins you get with this cool Must-Have WordPress Plugins pack. Don’t wait too long and purchase this set because here we have collected all the useful plugins needed for the building of a great website and for its better functionality. We’ll install these plugins ourselves, typically it takes from 2 to 3 days. If you haven’t installed the template yet, we can help you with it for an extra $49. After checking how all these plugins work by us, you will have such an opportunity as free revision.
Wrapping Up
So, here’s our list of best free and paid WordPress search engine plugins. All of them come with multiple helpful features needed to create an effective and engaging search system right on the website. Every single add-on has the strengths that make them stand out among other similar plugins. Go through each of them to decide on the one that perfectly suits your needs and fits your budget.
Hopefully, this post was helpful for you. If you haven't found your favorite plugin in the list, feel free to leave a comment with the recommendation, and we will include it in our future blog posts.
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