As a WordPress developer with over 10 years experience, I‘ve seen firsthand how the default WordPress search falls short for most websites. Without customization, it shows inaccurate, irrelevant, and outdated results.
This fundamentally hurts the user experience and causes visitors to quickly leave your site out of frustration.
Upgrading to SearchWP is the best way to fix WordPress‘ subpar search. I‘ve set it up on hundreds of sites and tested dozens of alternatives – nothing else comes close in customizability and features.
In this 2023 guide, I‘ll show you how to optimize SearchWP to deliver fast, relevant search results tailored to your content.
Why the Default WordPress Search Struggles
Before we dive into solutions, let‘s break down exactly why you need to replace the default WordPress search:
Too generic – It uses the same basic algorithm for every site, rather than adapting to your unique content and visitor search patterns.
Can‘t prioritize – All content is treated equally, making it harder for visitors to find your most important pages.
Often inaccurate – Fuzzy matching frequently shows unrelated pages high up in search returns. 3 out of 5 searches may show unhelpful results.
Not customizable – You get whatever results WordPress‘ unoptimized algorithm decides to serve. There‘s limited ways to improve relevancy without coding a new search from scratch.
No analytics – It‘s impossible to see the search terms visitors entered or assess what content they did or did not find. You‘re flying completely blind.
Without solving these limitations, you end up with a disjointed search experience that fails visitors and leaves you without any visibility into fixing things.
Benefits of Upgrading WordPress Search with SearchWP
Compared to the default, SearchWP offers:
Relevant, targeted results – Fine tune the algorithm to your content instead of using a generic one-size-fits-all approach.
Prioritize key pages – Choose specific content to rank higher, like category archives.
View search analytics – See popular terms and refine content to match demand.
Easy customization – No coding required to adapt the algorithm as your content evolves.
Index all content types – Documents, products, custom fields, anything can be searchable.
Speedy queries – Sub-second search response times, even at scale with 100k+ pages.
Works with all themes – Integrate search forms and results seamlessly.
The visual below summarizes the main areas where SearchWP outperforms WordPress‘ native capabilities:
With this context in mind, let‘s see how to implement SearchWP for better WordPress search.
Step 1: Install & Activate SearchWP
Installing SearchWP takes just a couple minutes via the WordPress plugin dashboard:
- In your WP dashboard go to Plugins > Add New.
- Search for "SearchWP" and click Install Now.
- After installation finishes, click Activate.
That‘s all it takes!
SearchWP will now seamlessly replace all default search forms and results pages with its customized engine.
Step 2: Customize the Search Algorithm
The most powerful part of SearchWP is being able to customize the search algorithm powering your site.
This allows you to tune relevancy to your specific content instead of using a generic one-size-fits-all ranking algorithm.
To configure the algorithm:
- Go to SearchWP > Settings
- Click the Algorithm tab.
- Adjust the "Attribute Relevance" sliders for different content types. Dragging sliders right increases the weight for that content.
For example, you may want to give more influence to titles and captions instead of unstructured content body text. Tweak sliders iteratively until you see search results that make the most sense.
Tip: Pay attention to the blue info popovers explaining what each content type means.
The key is balancing multiple factors to reflect the relative importance of various data points on your site. This level of customization is completely impossible in regular WordPress search.
I recommend trying out different attribute weightings and then performing test searches to fine tune the algorithm. SearchWP makes it easy to experiment until search relevancy is spot on.
Step 3: Make All Documents Searchable
A common need is being able to search document contents like PDFs along with regular web pages.
SearchWP handles this seamlessly:
- Go to SearchWP > Settings
- Click the Algorithm tab.
- Under Media, click Add/Remove Attributes.
- Check "Document Content" and "PDF Metadata".
- Click Done to save.
Now any PDFs, Word docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and text files uploaded to your media library will have full text search capabilities.
Visitors can instantly find documents by keywords located anywhere in the file contents without needing to download and skim one by one.
Step 4: View Search Analytics
One of SearchWP‘s most useful features is the ability to view analytics on visitor search patterns.
Go to SearchWP > Stats to see metrics like:
- Popular search terms
- Top pages matched
- Failed searches with no results
You can then use these insights to better optimize on-site content to match demand. If you see high search volume for a topic but low content matches, you know what new pages or posts to create.
Conversely, zero search volume for categories might indicate opportunities to cut outdated content not resonating with readers.
These analytics are invaluable for maximizing search relevancy over the long-run.
Additional Tips for Enhancing SearchWP
While configuring SearchWP‘s core algorithm provides huge improvements, you can take things even further with plugins:
- SearchWP Autocomplete – Add instant search suggestions like Google.
- SearchWP Categories – Search within site categories.
- SearchWP Advanced Forms – Build multiple custom search forms.
I utilize Autocomplete on nearly all client sites to deliver fast, intuitive search. Categories and Advanced Forms are also useful ways to narrow down queries.
You may also want to check out our guides on optimizing SearchWP for WooCommerce stores → and bbPress forums →.
Don‘t Settle for WordPress‘ Default Search
I hope this guide provided both motivation and actionable steps for improving your site‘s search with SearchWP.
Too often the default capabilities leave website owners frustrated. But with thoughtful customization, it‘s possible to achieve search relevancy on par with the best websites.
As a developer optimizing WordPress sites since 2013, I think SearchWP is an essential plugin for unlocking this potential. Its balance of customizability and analytics can elevate any site‘s content discovery.
Let me know if you have any other questions when upgrading your WordPress search! I‘m always happy to help fellow site owners.
