sandywp / plugins / better-search
Better Search
Relevant search results for WordPress
Better Search replaces the default WordPress search with a better search engine that gives contextual results sorted by relevance.
Ready in seconds.
v4.4.2 5,000+ installs WP 6.8+ PHP 7.4+
What you get inside
3 screens-
Better Search Dashboard
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Better Search Popular Searches table in Admin
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Better Search widget
About this plugin
Supercharge your WordPress site search with Better Search – a powerful replacement for the default WordPress search engine that delivers more relevant results and a richer search experience.
Better Search gives you complete control over your site’s search results. Fine-tune relevance, search across different fields and post types, track popular queries, and customise the output — all without writing a single line of code.
Make your search more intuitive and engaging with a search heatmap of popular queries, display results as users type with AJAX Live Search, and tailor the look to your theme with custom templates and styles.
Built with performance in mind, Better Search includes its own caching system and works smoothly with popular caching plugins like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. It also features a profanity filter and is translation-ready for global use.
Awesome features in Better Search:
- Automatic: Just activate the plugin and enjoy better search results right away
- Seamless integration: No need to edit any code or create custom search templates
- Relevance: Sort the results by relevance or date, and assign different weights to title and content
- Control the results: Search within title, content, excerpt, meta fields, authors, tags and other taxonomies and comments
- Popular searches: Show a heatmap of the most popular searches on your site, either as a widget or a shortcode
- AJAX Live Search: Show search results as you type in any search form on your site
- Customisation: Use your own template file and CSS styles for the ultimate look and feel
- Supports cache plugins: Works seamlessly with caching plugins like WP-Super-Cache and W3 Total Cache
- Profanity filter: Filter out any words that you don’t want to appear in search queries
- Translation ready: Use the plugin in any language
If you want to improve your site search, download Better Search today and experience the difference for yourself.
Features in Better Search Pro
Better Search Pro gives you even more control and performance:
- 🗄️ Efficient Content Storage and Indexing
- 🔍 Multisite Search
- ✨ Fuzzy Matches
- 🎯 Relevance Threshold
- 🔗 Search Post Slugs
- ⚙️ REST API Integration
- 🔄 LIKE Fallback Search
- ⚖️ Advanced Relevance Weighting
MySQL FULLTEXT indices
Better Search adds the following MySQL FULLTEXT indices to the wp_posts table:
post_contentpost_title(post_title, post_content)
On multisite, these are added to each blog upon activation. These indices power the relevance-based search and are required for full functionality.
Contribute
Better Search is also available on Github. If you’ve got some cool feature you’d like to implement into the plugin or a bug you’ve been able to fix, consider forking the project and sending me a pull request.
Plugins by WebberZone
Better Search is one of the many plugins developed by WebberZone. Check out our other plugins:
- Contextual Related Posts – Display related posts on your WordPress blog and feed
- WebberZone Link Warnings – Add accessible warnings for external links and target=”_blank” links
- Top 10 – Track daily and total visits to your blog posts and display the popular and trending posts
- Knowledge Base – Create a knowledge base or FAQ section on your WordPress site
- WebberZone Snippetz – The ultimate snippet manager for WordPress to create and manage custom HTML, CSS or JS code snippets
- Auto-Close – Automatically close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks and manage revisions on your WordPress site
Questions
- Will this work with any WordPress theme?
Yes! It replaces the default WordPress search and integrates with most themes out of the box.
- Does it support WooCommerce or custom post types?
Yes, you can enable searching in any public post type from the settings.
- How does it affect performance?
Better Search uses MySQL FULLTEXT indexes and includes internal caching. It also works well with external caching plugins.
- Can I customise the search results template?
Yes, you can override the results template by copying the file to your theme directory. More info in the documentation.
- What is the Profanity Filter?
It filters out selected keywords from being searched. Handy for family-safe sites.
Better Search includes a very cool profanity filter using the script from Banbuilder. You can customize which list of words you want to filter out from the Better Search settings page. Find the setting called “Filter these words:”. The plugin will automatically strip out partial and complete references to these words. You can turn the filter off by emptying the list.
- How can I report security bugs?
You can report security bugs through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team help validate, triage and handle any security vulnerabilities. Report a security vulnerability.
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