Improve the Default WordPress Search Engine With Relevanssi

If you have used default search box of your WordPress blog, you may have find the search results to be inaccurate for most of the time. It is also happening to me. Sometimes, when I want to search for old articles using the default search box, I couldn’t get the results that I am looking for.

It’s frustrating!

Below is one of the cases when the search box gives totally unrelated search result. I use “Twitter” term and the result that came out is:

I can’t see any connection between the articles with Twitter. In fact, I’m not aware at all to write any single “Twitter” word in these articles.

The Solution? I Use Relevanssi

Before I talk more about this great WordPress search plugin, let’s compare the search results when I activated Relevanssi.

See the difference? For this time around, the search result is way more accurate and relevant to what I am looking for.

Basically, Relevanssi is a WordPress plugin that replaces the standard WordPress search with a better search engine, with lots of features and configurable options. With Relevanssi, you can get better results and better presentation of results.

Your users will love it!

The Features

Relevanssi comes with two versions; free and premium. Personally, I find that the free version is sufficient enough to significantly improve the WordPress default search. There is no major difference between the two versions.

Some of the key features of Relevanssi are as follows:

• Search results sorted in the order of relevance, not by date.
• Fuzzy matching: match partial words, if complete words don’t match.
• Search for phrases with quotes, for example “search phrase”.
• Create custom excerpts that show where the hit was made, with the search terms highlighted.
• Google-style “Did you mean?” suggestions based on successful user searches.
• Log queries, show most popular queries and recent queries with no hits.

Give this WordPress plugin a try and see how the above features help to improve your blog. You’ll lose nothing.

Tutorial – Set Up Your Relevanssi Plugin

First, install and activate Relevanssi plugin in your WordPress blog. This can be done by visiting Plugins > Add New. Then search for Relevanssi. This plugin is listed in the first row of the search result.

After you have activated the plugin, go to its setting page. It is important as this will decide how good your search box will be.

The settings page comes with clear explanation to help you on every option that you have to choose. The decision should be based on your needs and how you want your search box to behave. Read and understand how each of the features will change the search results. It is because every WordPress blog has its own character.

Why I Will Keep Using Relevanssi

Besides the features that come with Relevanssi, the reason why I will keep using this plugin is because it keeps a log of searches on your WordPress blog. This allows me to understand the readers better – do they use the search box? What kind of keywords that they are using? Do Relevanssi give the readers the results that they are looking for?

With this data, it will give me some idea on how can I improve this WordPress blog and how should I tweak the Relevanssi’s setting page so that it can produce better search results.

You have this feature by installing supporting WordPress plugin called Relevanssi Dashboard.

Plus, besides an accurate search algorithm, Relevanssi also presents search results much nicer way.

What Now?

My suggestion is give Relevanssi a try and observe how it improves your default WordPress search engine. I don’t see any reason why I should deactivate this plugin any time soon as it has clearly improved Kissing Crust.

You can read more about Relevanssi in its official page or in the WordPress plugin page.

P/s Have you try this plugin? What do you think about it? Share your thoughts below.