7 Best Free Search Plugins for WordPress In 2024
A search function is a, no doubt, crucial part of any website, as it enables swift information retrieval for visitors, particularly on website pages, blogs, news portals, eCommerce platforms, and knowledge bases housing substantial content repositories. The native WordPress search function exhibits limitations by default. It fails to comprehensively search all content, its search algorithm lacks robustness and produces suboptimal results. Also, for sites with extensive content, this default search feature may lead to performance issues due to its database queries. That’s where WordPress search plugins come into action. They can help these sites greatly.
Furthermore, a seamless user experience stands as a cornerstone of online success. A feature-rich, robust search functionality can significantly impact website navigation. Search plugins can help site search performance by either supplanting the native WordPress search system or augmenting it. You can try these 7 Best free search plugins for your WordPress site to extend your search functionality.
1. Relevanssi
2. Ajax Search Lite
3. Ivory Search – WordPress Search Plugin
4. SearchWP Live Ajax Search
5. ACF: Better Search
6. WP Extended Search
7. WP Search with Algolia
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Relevanssi presents itself as an exhaustive search solution for WordPress websites, offering amazing features such as compatibility with bbPress and Gutenberg, the ability to search comments, tags, and custom fields, as well as extending support to multisite setups, and more. By replacing the standard WP search functionality with an enhanced search engine, Relevanssi gives you more features and customizable possibilities. Therefore, you will get the best search results and presentation. Also, the plugin allows the sorting of search results based on relevancy rather than date. In cases where complete words do not match, Relevanssi employs partial word matching or fuzzy matching to broaden search results.
Ajax Search Lite features 8 Built-in templates as well as customizable color options for more personalization possibilities. This user-friendly plugin contains an Ajax-powered search form, providing a dynamic live search bar to enhance user experience. You will also get frontend search settings and custom post types & field support. Furthermore, It is designed as a responsive live search engine and provides smooth animations with full mobile device support and search result filter capabilities. Users can easily filter results based on category and post type. It replaces your default WordPress search with a more efficient and visually appealing search engine that allows advanced functionalities such as a powerful Ajax search to fine-tune visitor experiences.
Ivory Search stands as a feature-rich yet user-friendly advanced search plugin for WordPress. This powerful tool empowers you to make customized search forms to enhance the default WP search experience. Also, this Amazing search plugin allows you to create unlimited search forms, each of which can be individually configured to meet WP searches to specific preferences. This capability enables diverse search operations to be performed on your site content. Besides this, Ivory Search offers the flexibility to show custom search forms in various site locations, including the Footer, Header, and Widget area, as well as any desired location through shortcodes. In this search plugin, you will get features and options like Search Analytics, Multilingual Search Support, Search using AJAX Search, Filtering Options, and more.
Like the Ajax Search Lite plugin, this plugin also lets you empower your search forms with AJAX-powered live search. It is an easily customizable search plugin that utilizes a template loader to show results. This approach enables users to seamlessly modify their SearchWP Live Search performance without going through chaotic options. Besides this, it includes many options and configuration settings for developers. Most of its functionality comes with a single HTML5 data attribute embedded in your search form input field. Furthermore, this search plugin has support for widgets, so you can easily insert live search forms anywhere you want.
The Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin enhances the default WordPress search engine by allowing it to search for content within specified fields. This plugin also streamlines the search process. All this without requiring additional code modifications, operating seamlessly and autonomously. The ACF plugin optimizes search engine performance by modifying the SQL database query, resulting in improved search results. Also, the plugin supports searching for complete phrases rather than individual words, thereby enhancing the accuracy of search outcomes. These SQL queries are modified by spreading the traditional search to defined fields of the ACF plugin. Also, it works similarly in the admin panel and search page.
WP Extended Search is one of the feature-packed search plugins for WordPress. It is a lightweight search plugin that lets users customize WP search to search in Post Meta, Author names, Categories, and more using admin settings. Users can also manage default WP behavior to search in the title, content, etc., of the post. Furthermore, users will get the options for selecting widgets, shortcodes, or HTML and including or excluding any public post type. Other features of the WP Extended Search plugin are sorting search results, SQL relation modification between search terms, compatibility with WooCommerce, exclusion of old content from search results, and more.
With the Algolia plugin, you can index the site’s content swiftly using its One-click indexing feature and deliver lightning-fast, precise search results. The plugin also gives you a native typo-tolerance option for relevant, faceted-ready search results. Its granular control lets you maintain search content relevance and position of the content. Besides this, the Algolia search plugin gives you Autocomplete and Instant search features, so you can deliver visitors a vigorous search experience. For developers, Algolia includes hooks and filters so they can customize the indexed content and get full authority over the appearance and relevance of their users’ search experience.
These search plugins enable seamless navigation, offering an effective means to replace the native WordPress search system or enhance your site’s search functionality. As we said earlier, the native WordPress search function possesses limitations by default, but the integration of these plugins introduces user-friendly front-end features, such as live Ajax search suggestions that dynamically appear as users begin typing. So, explore the potential benefits of these plugins to optimize your online presence.
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