Looking for the best search engines for WordPress?
When running a WordPress website, a critical feature that can make or break the user experience is the search function.
When search works as it should, site visitors can quickly find what they need and achieve their goals, leading to higher conversion rates and better user engagement.
But WordPress’s native search is limited in functionality, ignores key content such as custom fields and documents, and often returns irrelevant results to site visitors.
This is why WordPress search engine plugins are necessary for sites with extensive, varied content. They bring relevance, speed, usability, and analytics to WordPress search, enhancing the search experience.
This article provides a rundown of the 5 best search engines for WordPress, explaining why they are great choices for faster and more accurate search results, so users can decide which option is best suited for their site’s search needs.
📑 Table of Contents
Quick Comparison Table
| # | Plugins | Best Use Case | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SearchWP | Sites that need multiple search forms | Starts at $99/year |
| 2 | Relevanssi | Multilingual sites and multisite networks | Free + Pro starts at $129.40/year |
| 3 | FacetWP | Sites requiring faceted filtering | Starts at $99/year |
| 4 | ElasticPress | High-traffic, content-heavy, or enterprise-level websites | Starts at $31/month or $348/year |
| 5 | Ivory Search | Small to medium-sized sites | Free + Pro version starts at $19.99/year |
What to Look For In A Search Engine Plugin
WordPress search engine plugins all promise one thing: faster, more accurate search results. However, they come in different flavors, each prioritizing different features.
To choose the right WordPress search plugin, users need a clear understanding of which features to look for to ensure their choice delivers exactly what they need and provides the best search experience for site visitors.
Below are some of the key features to evaluate when choosing a WordPress search engine plugin:
Comprehensive content indexing
If a search engine plugin indexes most of the content on a WordPress site, it’s often a telltale sign that it will make a big difference in the site’s search experience. This is because WordPress’s native search only searches post types and pages. A good search engine plugin should index custom fields, taxonomies, documents, and media files, among other content types.
Relevance & ranking controls
These features enable users to fine-tune the search results that are displayed to site visitors. This way, they see only the most relevant results first and can find what they are looking for faster. Relevance and ranking controls include features like weighting, keyword stemming, fuzzy matching, and partial matches.
Speed & performance
A good WordPress search engine plugin prioritizes features that ensure search results are displayed to users as quickly as possible. This is important for SEO and user experience. The presence of features such as AJAX/live search and off-server processing can give some insight into how quickly a WordPress search engine plugin will perform.
WooCommerce Integration (if needed)
For users running eCommerce sites, the ability of site visitors to find products quickly determines sales performance. Search engine plugins that include WooCommerce integrations for seamless product searches will be helpful in this area.
Search Analytics
This feature is important for users who want to understand what visitors are searching for on their site, refine search results, and identify content gaps. Most good search engine plugins include search analytics out-of-the-box or integrate with Google Analytics to provide valuable insights.
Customization & UI
The way search forms are displayed on a website matters. The ideal search engine plugin lets users customize search forms to align with their brand identity and integrate seamlessly with other parts of their site.
With these in mind, users can better evaluate search engine plugins and make an informed decision about which to select for their website.
The 5 Best Search Engines for WordPress
It’s now time to take a look at the 5 best WordPress search engines and what makes them stand out from the rest.
SearchWP
SearchWP takes the win as our overall best search engine for WordPress. This powerful premium plugin integrates seamlessly with WordPress’s native search, enhancing its capabilities to make search easier and faster for site visitors.
One of the most exciting SearchWP features is the ability to create custom search engines for different parts of a site. Each search engine’s content source and ranking algorithm can be fully customized. This way, the search experience is tailored in every instance, displaying only relevant results to visitors.
The SearchWP plugin also provides modern, customizable templates for search forms and search results pages. These allow users to create a cohesive search experience that integrates well with their site’s overall branding.
While the SearchWP search engine excels at improving WordPress search, it has some drawbacks. One of the main ones is the slight learning curve required to make the most of its features. Non-technical users might find the setup process overwhelming, despite the extensive documentation.
Additionally, most of its advanced features do not come bundled with the plugin. Users need to install multiple extensions to use them.
Key Features
- AJAX Search: SearchWP includes AJAX integration, enabling live search that instantly displays results and surfaces relevant content for site visitors.
- Advanced Indexing: SearchWP indexes nearly all WordPress content, including custom fields, media, PDF files, WooCommerce products, and even comments. This makes it easy for both site visitors and admins to find all types of content when searching.
- Synonym Recognition & Keyword Stemming: When a site visitor misspells a word, abbreviates it, or searches for a keyword stem, SearchWP still returns relevant results thanks to its synonym recognition and keyword stemming features.
- WooCommerce Integration: SearchWP includes an extension that integrates with WooCommerce to improve search relevance and product indexing, thereby increasing customer conversion rates. It also integrates with Easy Digital Downloads and BigCommerce.
- Search Redirects: For certain search terms, automatically redirecting to the relevant content provides the best search experience for site visitors. In such cases, SearchWP’s automatic search term redirecting feature comes in handy.
- Search Statistics: SearchWP offers a built-in search statistics dashboard that logs site visitor searches. This provides valuable insights into what they are searching for and how well the search implementation meets their needs.
Pricing
Plans are annual and start at $99/year. They offer a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Who Should Choose SearchWP
SearchWP is a robust and feature-rich search engine plugin, making it ideal for sites that require:
- multiple search form configurations across various sections;
- users with professional websites where user experience cannot be compromised;
- WooCommerce stores with complex product catalogs that require searching by SKUs and product attributes; and
- generally content-heavy sites that use custom fields, taxonomies, shortcodes, etc.
To read our complete review, see A Candid Review of the SearchWP Plugin.
Relevanssi
Relevanssi is the next search engine plugin on our list and stands out for extending WordPress’s native search by delivering results sorted by relevance rather than chronology.
Relevanssi is available in both free and premium versions. The free version is quite feature-rich and enhances search results immediately, especially for smaller sites that do not require advanced options such as PDF and custom field indexing.
With the premium version, users get access to additional filters that provide greater control over what site visitors can search for and how.
Multisite searching is a powerful feature of the Relevanssi search engine plugin that enables users with multiple WordPress websites in a network (e.g., a group of hospitals or schools) to implement cross-site search.
This prevents site visitors from having to search through each site within the network to find what they are looking for.
From a performance perspective, the Relevanssi search engine plugin can be resource-intensive, requiring substantial database storage to operate efficiently. It is also quite technical and offers an outdated, utilitarian user interface.
Generally speaking, some technical knowledge is required to use Relevanssi to its full potential.
Key Features
- Relevance-Based Ranking: The Relevanssi search engine uses a weighting system to assign relevance scores to content elements, which it then uses to rank search results. This is done by applying numerical multipliers to various content elements.
- Advanced Indexing: Relevanssi indexes a broad range of content types, including custom fields, shortcode output, taxonomy terms, and PDFs. This produces more comprehensive search results for site visitors.
- Synonyms and Stopwords: Like SearchWP, the Relevanssi search engine lets users create synonyms that link related words to prevent search dead ends. Stopwords exclude irrelevant words from the index, keeping the database lightweight and enabling faster search results.
- Search Logging: Relevanssi lets users log site visitor queries to track what they search for and the results they receive. This is useful for making tweaks to the search engine settings when needed.
- Multilingual and Multisite Support: The multilingual feature ensures that only relevant search results are displayed when searches are performed in different languages. The multisite feature, on the other hand, enables users to search across a network of WordPress sites.
Pricing
The free version of Relevanssi is available for download from the WordPress.org plugin repository. The premium version is available on the plugin website and starts at $129.40/year.
Who Should Choose Relevanssi
The free version of Relevanssi is a great search engine plugin for budget-conscious site owners who want to improve their site’s search without an upfront investment.
The premium version is ideal for multilingual sites, multisite networks, and sites that prioritize content relevance over recency. Site admins who want to install the Relevanssi search engine must ensure they have sufficient database resources to ensure smooth operation.
To read our complete review, see Relevanssi for WordPress: Is it Right for You?.
FacetWP
FacetWP is a premium faceted search and filtering engine that makes searching sites with large listings, products, and similar data faster and more seamless.
Unlike other search engines on this list, FacetWP is primarily a filtering plugin rather than a comprehensive search plugin.
With the FacetWP search engine, users can access a wide range of facet types, including sliders, checkboxes, dropdowns, and more. These can be combined in many ways to create facets for different pages on a website using its listing template feature.
FacetWP offers a user-friendly interface that makes facet creation more approachable. The plugin indexes posts, pages, custom fields, WooCommerce products, and custom taxonomies, making it easy to filter and find relevant content.
One of the main drawbacks of the FacetWP search engine plugin is that it lacks several key features found in more comprehensive search plugins, such as content element relevance ranking and indexing of document types like PDFs.
Another drawback is that, despite its easy-to-use interface, unlocking the plugin's full functionality requires a slight learning curve.
Key Features
- AJAX Filtering: FacetWP’s filtering is super fast, thanks to its AJAX integration and caching add-on, which stores AJAX requests in the database. This is great for SEO and for providing a pleasant search experience to users.
- Tons of UI Choices: FacetWP offers a wide range of facet types to make filtering through various content types quick and easy. Some are built-in, such as checkboxes and radio buttons, while others need to be installed as add-on plugins, e.g., color and range list facets.
- Listing Template: With this feature, FacetWP users can create custom templates that control how filters and search results are displayed on the site’s frontend.
- Plugin and Theme Compatibility: FacetWP search engine supports popular WordPress plugins and themes, including Breakdance, Elementor, WP All Import, and Yoast SEO. It also integrates with SearchWP and Relevanssi, which helps extend its capabilities beyond faceted filtering.
- Developer-Friendly: Numerous hooks and filters are provided to enable developers to customize the FacetWP search engine plugin more extensively.
Pricing
Starts at $99 annually. Offers a trial version.
Who Should Choose FacetWP
Anyone running an e-commerce store who needs Amazon-style filtering will find great value in the FacetWP search engine plugin. The plugin is also a good option for business directory sites, real estate sites, job board sites, and pretty much any site that requires visitors to filter through robust content catalogs.
To read our complete review, see FacetWP: A Complete Review.
ElasticPress
ElasticPress takes a unique approach to WordPress search. Instead of integrating directly with WordPress’s native search engine and database, it uses its own Elasticsearch server to make search faster and less resource-intensive.
The ElasticPress search engine plugin is free and offers a range of valuable features. However, it requires a search hosting service, which comes at a cost. The hosting service allows it to bypass WordPress’s default MySQL database entirely and index content on its own server, delivering near-instant search results to site visitors.
ElasticPress offers a managed search hosting service and allows users to self-host or use a third-party host if preferred.
With the ElasticPress search engine, almost all content types are indexed, including posts, pages, comments, users, documents, and WooCommerce products. It also indexes protected and unpublished content and helps quickly locate customer orders in the backend, making it useful for site admins as well.
ElasticPress’s main drawback is that it does not operate as a standalone plugin and, as such, requires some technical know-how to set up and use properly.
Key Features
- Instant Search Results: ElasticPress uses its own Elasticsearch API to deliver results in milliseconds, rather than relying on WordPress’s native search database, which yields slower response times.
- WooCommerce Integration: ElasticPress includes smart filters that integrate with WooCommerce, enabling site visitors to filter product catalogs more quickly, regardless of complexity.
- Faceted Filtering: The ElasticPress search engine plugin includes filter widgets and Gutenberg blocks to enable faceted search on a WordPress website. Widgets allow searching across taxonomies, metadata, post types, and more.
- Weighted Results: With this feature, users can add greater precision to search results by assigning weights to elements within each content type. For example, within the post content type, the “title” element can be weighted higher than “content” and “author”. As a result, when a site visitor searches for posts, the title is prioritized in the results over other elements.
- Comprehensive Real-time Indexing: After the initial indexing performed during the plugin setup phase, most subsequent content syncing occurs in real time. Every edit, new post, or product update appears in search immediately, ensuring site visitors are never served outdated content.
- Fuzzy Matching & Synonyms: ElasticPress includes these features to add even more flexibility to the search experience. Both ensure that the quality of search results is never compromised by typos or by a lack of exact-match keyword matching.
Pricing
The ElasticPress search engine plugin is free to download from WordPress.org. However, it requires a paid search hosting service to function. ElasticPress offers a managed search hosting service starting at $31/month or $348/year.
Who Should Choose ElasticPress
ElasticPress is better suited for high-traffic, content-heavy, or enterprise-level websites, where search performance is critical. Good examples include WooCommerce stores with huge product catalogs, multisite networks, and news sites.
To read our complete review, see ElasticPress: How Does it Compare to Other Search Plugins?
Ivory Search
Ivory Search is a freemium, lightweight, and performance-optimized search engine plugin that, like SearchWP, lets users create unlimited custom search forms to deliver tailored search experiences to site visitors.
This is highly valuable for users looking to improve WordPress’s native search, which uses a single, site-wide approach that often returns irrelevant results. Custom search forms can be added anywhere on a website using the Ivory Search widgets or shortcodes.
Ivory Search uses an inverted index search engine and AJAX to deliver search results quickly and consistently.
The main difference between this search engine technology and WordPress’s native search is that, rather than querying the database every time a search is performed, it preprocesses and maps all indexable content. This makes search result retrieval much faster and reduces the load on the site’s server.
The Ivory Search user interface is functional and straightforward, integrating seamlessly with the WordPress admin interface. Beginners will feel right at home configuring the plugin's search features.
That said, Ivory Search isn’t without its own drawbacks. Unlike most other search engine plugins, Ivory Search lacks the keyword weighting feature that helps fine-tune the relevance of search results.
Its analytics feature is also quite basic compared to other plugins on this list, as it isn’t built into the plugin and relies on a Google Analytics integration to track site searches.
Key Features
- Unlimited Custom Search Forms: Ivory Search users can create as many custom search forms as needed and display them anywhere on the site, including the navigation menu, header, footer, and widget area.
- Advanced Search Scope: Forms created with Ivory Search can be configured to search posts, pages, media files, WooCommerce products, comments, custom fields, and more. Users can also exclude specific content types from indexing to produce more tailored search results.
- Demo Search: This feature lets site admins test search forms live before making them visible to site visitors, helping ensure they work as intended and maintain a consistent search experience across the site.
- WooCommerce Integration: In the pro version, Ivory Search's WooCommerce integration allows search forms to target product types, categories, attributes, SKUs, and more.
- Google Analytics Integration: Ivory Search includes a Google Analytics integration that lets users track what site visitors search for on their website. While not as convenient as a built-in analytics tracker, it still gets the job done.
Pricing
The free version of the Ivory Search plugin can be downloaded from the WordPress.org plugin repository. The pro version starts at $19.99/year for one site.
Who Should Choose Ivory Search
The free version of the Ivory Search plugin is beginner-friendly and ideal for budget-conscious site owners who want to improve search without incurring upfront costs. The pro version is well-suited to small to medium-sized sites that need a little more in terms of features, such as WooCommerce integration and the ability to search PDF content.
To read our complete review, see Ivory Search for WordPress: Our Honest Assessment.
5 Best Search Engines — Final Thoughts
Each search engine plugin discussed in this article improves WordPress search in different ways, depending on the features it emphasizes. The best choice for a website depends on its specific use case and the site admins' technical expertise.
However, there are certain key features that should be present in any search engine plugin to truly improve the default WordPress search. These include:
- the ability to index most WordPress content
- controls for search results' relevance and ranking
- features that enhance search performance and speed
- search analytics for insights into website searches
- customizations for search forms, and
- seamless e-commerce integration for those who need it
Based on the list, SearchWP is the best search engine plugin overall, as it offers most of the key features needed to significantly improve WordPress search. It also features a modern, visually appealing user interface that is easier for the average WordPress user to navigate.
The other search engine plugins are also worth exploring, especially for users with very specific use cases that are better addressed by some plugins than others. For example, high-traffic, enterprise-level site owners will find ElasticPress better suited to their search requirements than SearchWP.
All in all, fast and relevant search is a non-negotiable for any WordPress site to remain competitive. WordPress’s default, unoptimized search can significantly degrade the user experience and SEO performance. These plugins effectively solve this problem, enabling site owners to deliver faster, more relevant, and more accurate search results to visitors.
5 Best Search Engines — Frequently Asked Questions
You can add search to WordPress in two main ways. The native WordPress search can be added by going to Appearance › Widgets in the admin menu and adding the Search widget to your preferred widget area. You can also add search to WordPress using WordPress search engine plugins such as SearchWP, Ivory Search, and ElasticPress.
The Ivory Search plugin offers both a free and a pro version. The free version is packed with valuable search features and is ideal for budget-conscious site owners looking to improve search without upfront costs.
A search plugin, in the WordPress context, is software that replaces or extends WordPress’s default search. It often includes features such as broader content indexing, AJAX-powered live search integration, and search analytics, enabling faster, more relevant search experiences for site visitors.
Yes. WordPress has its own built-in search engine that powers site search out of the box. However, it is limited in functionality and often returns unhelpful results for site visitors. It can also be quite slow and lacks the sophistication of more modern search engines. This is why many use plugins such as SearchWP to deliver faster, more accurate search results.
WordPress search can be improved by installing any one of the following search engine plugins:
- SearchWP
- Relevanssi
- FacetWP
- ElasticPress
- Ivory Search
5 Best Search Engines — Related Information
