Search plays a major role in the success of most WordPress websites today. Yet WordPress’s native search has not kept pace with modern search requirements.
It often returns irrelevant results and hides custom content because of its outdated algorithm. Site performance also suffers because it is database-driven and not optimized for speed.
Ivory Search is a popular WordPress search plugin that enhances WordPress’s native search with advanced options to improve content visibility.
This article takes a deep dive into the Ivory Search plugin to explore what it offers users and provide an honest assessment of its value in making WordPress site search more seamless.
📑 Table of Contents
What is Ivory Search?
Ivory Search, formerly known as Add Search to Menu, is a freemium plugin that improves content visibility by offering advanced search options that enhance the default WordPress search.
The plugin provides a straightforward, functional interface that lets users create unlimited search forms for different types of searches across site content.
The free version is feature-rich on its own and can be a good starting point for users whose search requirements are not too advanced.
The pro version, on the other hand, caters to users with more specific search use cases, such as enabling site visitors to search for product SKUs, sort search results by posts, and search for media files.
Ivory Search is trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners and is highly rated in the WordPress ecosystem.
Ivory Search Core Features
This section takes a look at the core features of the Ivory Search plugin and how they improve content visibility for users.
Unlimited Custom Search Forms
One of Ivory Search’s standout features is the ability to create unlimited search forms for as many use cases as needed.
This ensures that every section of a website that requires search has a uniquely customized search form that returns tailored results to site visitors. This is unlike the default WordPress search, which uses a single site-wide approach.
For example, a search form can be created for a website's blog page and configured to index only posts while excluding pages. A separate search form can also be created for its WooCommerce products page, which only searches WooCommerce products and their taxonomies.
Search forms can be added to various parts of a website using shortcodes or the Ivory Search widget.
Advanced Search Scope & Content Types
Ivory Search indexes and searches a wide range of content types beyond WordPress’s limited scope of pages and posts. Users can configure search forms to look through:
- Post types, including posts, pages, and custom post types
- Taxonomies, including categories, tags, and custom taxonomies
- Custom fields and metadata, which is valuable for sites using ACF or similar plugins
- Media and attachments, such as images and doc files (pro version)
- WooCommerce products (pro version)
With Ivory Search Pro, search forms can also be configured to search by post status, authors, and comments.
Additionally, users can specify content to exclude from search results to better fine-tune search output. This is also great for conserving resources on content-heavy sites with lots of content to index. However, enabling too many content types simultaneously creates database bloat that slows down admin panel performance. You will need to carefully balance search comprehensiveness against server resource limits.
Inverted Index Search Engine + AJAX Live Search
Ivory Search uses an inverted-index search engine in addition to AJAX live search to deliver faster, more accurate results.
The search engine represents a smarter way to index content in advance and organize and retrieve the data when it’s needed.
The difference between Ivory Search’s inverted-index search engine and WordPress’s native search engine is that, rather than querying the database every time a site visitor searches for something, it pre-processes and maps all indexable content and uses a structured reference system to retrieve the results.
This approach reduces the load on a site’s server during searches, so results are displayed much faster. However, building that initial index requires significant server resources. For sites with several thousand posts or products, the first-time indexing process can timeout on shared hosting plans.
For its AJAX integration, the plugin includes settings to configure how it works for each search form a user adds.
Intelligent Search Features
Ivory Search includes several smart search features that help make search results more accurate, so site visitors are not hit with the “no results found” error too often.
These features include:
- Fuzzy matching: With this, users can specify whether search forms should return only results that include the entire search term or partial matches.
- Keyword stemming: When this feature is turned on, results will also include the base/stem words of a searched keyword.
- Synonym word search: This helps search forms find better results by adding common synonyms for popular search terms.
- Stopword configuration: Let users enter words that they do not want visitors to be able to search on their site.
Search Analytics Integration
To help users track site searches and better understand site visitor search behavior, Ivory Search includes a Google Analytics integration.
Once enabled, users must activate the Site Search feature in the Google Analytics dashboard so that search data appears in the “Site Search” report.
A few additional settings need to be configured to ensure proper setup. These are covered on the Analytics settings page. This setup requires leaving WordPress to view search data in Google Analytics. You cannot see what visitors are searching for directly from your dashboard, which makes routine monitoring less convenient.
Setting Up and Configuring Ivory Search
Now, it’s time to take a closer look at how the Ivory Search plugin works in practice.
Installing Ivory Search
The installation steps for the Ivory Search plugin follow the standard WordPress plugin installation process.
For the free version, go to Plugins › Add Plugin, enter “Ivory Search” in the search bar, and press Enter/Return. Once the plugin appears on the refreshed page, click Install Now › Activate.
Pro users can download the plugin ZIP file after purchasing a license, and then go to Plugins › Add Plugin › Upload Plugin › Install Now › Activate.
Creating A Search Form
After installing and activating the Ivory Search plugin, click Settings to open the Search Forms page. Here, users can create as many search forms as needed for various use cases across their website.
Ivory Search provides 4 pre-designed search forms as templates for creating new ones without starting from scratch. However, users who want to create a search form without a template can simply click Add New Search Form.
The Search tab is open by default. In this tab, users can give their search form a title and choose which content to index and search using that form. Searchable content includes posts, pages, media, products, custom fields, etc.
The Exclude tab lets users select which content to exclude from search results. Users can exclude specific content from any of the searchable content included in the Search tab.
The search form customizer is available in the Design tab. This enables users to customize a search form’s colors, text, and overall style.
AJAX Search can be enabled and configured from the AJAX tab.
Finally, the Options tab is where advanced form options, such as the desired search engine, the order of search results, the number of posts per page, fuzzy matching, keyword stemming, and so on, are configured.
Once all tabs are configured, click Save Form to save the settings and make the search form ready for use.
Several search forms can be created for various use cases by following the steps outlined in this section.
Search Form Display Options
After a search form is created, configuring its display on the website is the natural next step.
The plugin lets users display search forms in multiple ways. These include:
- Shortcodes: A search form’s shortcode is generated when the form is saved. It can be copied and pasted into any page, post, or custom post type on a website.
- Menu display: To configure menu search, users can go to Ivory Search › Menu Search and select which menu locations or menus to display the search form.
- Widget placement: Users can add search forms to the sidebar or widget area by going to Appearance › Widgets from the admin menu, then adding the Ivory Search widget to the sidebar or widget area where they want it displayed.
Performance and Relevance Tuning
Keeping the search index lean and fast is one of the best ways to get the most out of Ivory Search.
Navigating to Ivory Search › Settings › Index displays the settings for building and maintaining the default search index for a website.
Users can enable automatic indexing so that newly added content is indexed. This ensures that site visitors are always presented with the latest and most relevant results for their searches.
It is important that users index only content that site visitors will find valuable to avoid a bloated index that unnecessarily slows down WordPress search. The smaller and more intentional the index is, the faster the plugin can return relevant results.
Ivory Search Pros & Cons
Pros
- Functional user interface
- Unlimited custom search forms
- Support for most content types
- AJAX live search support
- Lightweight and performance-optimized
- Useful free version
- Integrates with popular plugins, themes, and page builders such as WooCommerce, Elementor, and Divi
Cons
- Lacks built-in analytics, requiring users to navigate Google Analytics separately to view search data.
- Relies on the WordPress Customizer for design changes, creating a fragmented workflow that requires switching between screens.
- Cannot index the actual content inside PDFs or documents, only filenames.
- Initial indexing can timeout on shared hosting when processing large content catalogs.
- Performance degrades noticeably once product catalogs exceed approximately certain items.
Ivory Search Pricing
As mentioned earlier, Ivory Search offers both a free and a premium version of the plugin. The free version includes all of Ivory Search's core search features and is available for download from the WordPress.org plugin repository.
The premium version, on the other hand, includes advanced search features and is available in two plan tiers: Pro and Pro Plus. Both plans offer options to pay either once or annually.
Below is a breakdown of the available pricing plans:
Pro
| Annual Payment | One-Time Payment |
|---|---|
| $19.99 / year for 1 site | $99.99 for 1 site |
| $39.99 / year for 5 sites | $179.99 for 5 sites |
| $149.99 / year for 25 sites | $299.99 for 25 sites |
Pro Plus
| Annual Payment | One-Time Payment |
|---|---|
| $49.99 / year for 1 site | $189.99 for 1 site |
| $89.99 / year for 5 sites | $279.99 for 5 sites |
| $249.99 / year for 25 sites | $499.99 for 25 sites |
Ivory Search Pro features include ordering search results by posts, searching posts by a specific author, searching posts with a specific post status, and excluding posts with specific custom fields or metadata.
The Pro Plus plan includes features such as searching WooCommerce products by SKU, searching images, attachments, and media by specific file type, searching for the base word of searched keywords using Keyword Stemming, and excluding “Out of Stock” WooCommerce products from search.
Final Thoughts – Is Ivory Search Worth It?
Ivory Search offers a meaningful upgrade over WordPress’s native search by removing many of the limitations that cause irrelevant or “no result” messages.
The plugin lets users index most content types and create unlimited search forms for unique purposes, which can be placed across various locations on a website. This eliminates reliance on the native WordPress search’s one-size-fits-all approach, which often yields irrelevant results.
The plugin is a good option for blogs, documentation hubs, and other content-heavy platforms where presenting visitors with accurate, relevant search results is key. However, for sites like WooCommerce stores, there are more specialized alternatives that better serve search needs.
Users should note that Ivory Search is not an enterprise-grade search engine. It lacks advanced features, such as built-in analytics tracking, PDF content indexing, and modern UI customization elements, that may be required by larger websites with more far-reaching search needs.
Overall, Ivory Search strikes a decent balance between power, performance, and ease of use. It is worth installing for faster, more reliable search results.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ivory Search is a freemium plugin. It offers a free version that includes all core search features, such as creating unlimited search forms and displaying them anywhere on a site. The paid version offers more advanced features for deeper customization of search results.
To set up Ivory Search, users first need to install and activate the plugin on their site. Then they can create a search form by selecting which content to index or exclude. Finally, the form can be added to different parts of the site using a shortcode or other options, after which it is ready to use.
You can add a search option to your website using WordPress’s native search feature or by installing a WordPress search plugin. WordPress’s native search is quite limited, so it’s generally a good idea to use a search plugin like the one discussed in this article.
Ivory Search — Related Information
