Top 5 WordPress Search Plugins to Try
Improving visitor experience on your WordPress website is the key factor to increase conversions. It primarily makes your site visitors’ life a lot easier when exploring your website. WordPress offers a search feature by default, but it is extremely basic and has limitations.
You can improve your visitor’s search experience by installing the WordPress search plugin. It provides advanced features that can help site visitors easily locate what they are looking for on your website. However, with the many WordPress search plugins available, it can get overwhelming which ones are the best. To help you out, we will list our top 5 search plugins for WordPress and discuss each in detail below!
1. Ajax Search for WooCommerce
Your shoppers’ online store experience is important in their buying decisions. Therefore, you must make sure your website is easy to navigate. One way to achieve this is by installing Ajax Search for WooCommerce. It is free, but if you want more features, you can upgrade to their paid plan.
The plugin uses an Ajax script that allows search results to display as your site visitors type the keywords in your search box. It primarily helps simplify the search experience of your customers. Ajax Search provides searches by excerpts, descriptions, or product titles, along with an add-to-cart button.
You can limit the results you want to display and set colours, images, and labels. It is a multilingual plugin as well, so you can cater to a larger audience more effectively.
2. Ivory Search
Ivory Search is a popular WordPress search plugin with more than 50,000 active installations. It improves your website search feature and provides custom search forms. The forms can be displayed anywhere on your website depending on your theme and are able to highlight search terms.
Your website visitors can search for forums, attachments, products, pages, and posts. If you are running an ecommerce store, site viewers can look up products with description and variation. The plugin offers a demo search, so you can see how it works.
If you are interested to get more search features from the plugin, you have two premium options. You can go with a pro plan for £15.06 yearly or a lifetime licence for £75.28.
3. SearchWP
SearchWP is available as a premium search plugin that starts at £74.56 yearly. It allows you to index your media library, so your site visitors can search for content in your website like PDFs. It lets your site viewers search for post types, custom fields, taxonomies, and metadata.
You can analyse site visitors’ search behaviour as the plugin provides search insight and statistics. You will know what people want and do not on your website. The plugin offers a weighting system and custom algorithm that allow you to adjust ranked results. SearchWP is compatible with ecommerce stores as well as it lets site visitors look for products based on review or description.
4. Swiftype
With more than 1000 active installations, Swiftype is another great search plugin for WordPress. It best caters to websites with large traffic as it provides results extremely fast, so they can manage thousands of content types.
The plugin gives your site viewers search suggestions that are autocomplete based on author names, tags, or titles. People can refine search terms on your site, so they can have more attributes like content type, price, date, and location. Swiftype increases visitor engagement as well as it provides pop-ups relevant to products or content people are searching on your website.
The plugin uses an advanced algorithm for searches to help rank results. You, as an admin, can manage rankings through the drag-and-drop feature. The results automatically update if there are changes with your content.
The plugin provides detailed information and insights that allow you to analyse site viewers’ search behaviour. You can use the data to enhance search experience and provide more relevant content to your audience.
Swiftype gives a free trial for 14 days. If you decide to continue with their service, you can choose a plan that starts at £59.50 a month.
5. Relevanssi
Relevanssi has over 100,000 active installations and is one of the most used search plugins on WordPress. It ranks the results by relevance that allows your site visitors to get content that matches the search criteria or keyword. It provides advanced filtering that allows site visitors to search through comments, custom fields, categories, and tags.
Relevanssi highlights search terms and provides log queries that allow site visitors to know the most recent and popular searches. It assigns weights to any taxonomy or post, so you can configure your site content based on people’s needs.
You can download the plugin for free, but it offers premium plans for added features. Their plans start at £74.55 annually and have £225.05 for a lifetime license.
Conclusion
With our 5 best search plugins for WordPress, you can narrow down your options better. Installing the free version may be cost-effective, but if you want to provide your site viewers the best search experience, opting for a paid plan is ideal. You get to have advanced features that help improve site search options more effectively. So, pick your best WordPress search plugin from our list now and see an increase in the overall customer experience!