Search matching and result display

Relevanssi Premium replaces standard WordPress search with results ordered by relevance instead of date. Partial-word matching can find results when a complete word does not match. Visitors can search for exact phrases in quotation marks and select OR searches to match any term or AND searches to require every term. The plus and minus operators support AND and NOT searches.

Custom excerpts can show where a match occurred and highlight search terms. Those terms can also be highlighted in a document after a user opens it from the results. Premium adds improved spelling correction for “Did you mean?” suggestions.

Index coverage and ranking controls

Search can include comments, tags, categories, custom fields, custom post types, custom taxonomies, and shortcode contents. Premium adds indexing for PDF, Office, and Open Office attachment content; user profiles; category, tag, and custom taxonomy pages; and arbitrary columns in the wp_posts MySQL table. It can search across multiple websites in the same multisite installation.

Adjust the weighting of titles, tags, and comments. Premium also lets you assign weights to post types and taxonomies and give new posts extra weight. Restrict searches to categories or tags, use advanced filtering to shape results, or let visitors choose between AND and OR searches. Export and import options, execute supported search management tasks with WP CLI, provide related posts, and configure redirects for searches.

Search administration

Query logging can show popular searches and recent searches with no results. “Did you mean?” suggestions can draw on successful user searches. Search result throttling helps manage performance on large databases. A filter hook can disable indexing of post content and post titles.

Relevanssi works with multisite, bbPress, Gutenberg, WPML, Polylang, and membership extensions including s2member, Members, Groups, and Simple Membership.

Installation and database space

Install and activate the extension in WordPress, then open its settings and build the index by following the instructions there. Relevanssi uses the standard search form and usually needs no changes to the search results template. Contextual help is available from the Help menu in the WordPress admin dashboard, and the Relevanssi Knowledge Base has solutions and answers.

Check available database space before use. The index may need substantial storage; a rough estimate is three times the size of the wp_posts table. Limited space for database tables may cause problems.