Relevanssi – A Better Search vs AI Search – Smarter WordPress Search That Understands Meaning

Two things your site search is missing: instant results while typing, and an AI that understands what visitors mean. Drop in the AI Search Box block and your visitors see results the moment they start typing — thumbnail, title and price, right there in a dropdown. No page reload, no waiting. Then the part keyword search cannot do. Someone who types “summer blue dress” finds your “light cotton navy sundress”. Someone searching “headphones for running” finds your sweat-resistant wireless earbuds — even if the word “running” isn’t anywhere in the description. A reader looking for “how to reduce hosting costs” finds the article you titled “cutting your server bill in half”. WordPress search matches keywords. AI Search matches meaning. It reads your content — titles, descriptions, SKUs, categories, tags, attributes and custom fields — and converts each item into a vector that captures what it actually is. When someone searches, the plugin finds the closest matches by meaning, not by exact word overlap. The result: fewer empty search pages, more of your content surfaced for long-tail queries, and visitors who find what they wanted on the first try. Works on any WordPress site. Built with WooCommerce stores in mind — SKUs, variations, product attributes and catalog visibility are all handled properly — but the same search works for blog posts, pages, documentation, directories and any custom post type. Try it live before installing: wp-search.ai/demos runs this exact plugin on three sample stores. Type your own search – or a SKU – and see the traditional results next to the AI results, side by side: Clothing store – users describe an occasion, not a product name Bookstore – readers remember the theme, never the exact title Electronics – model codes and specs, where exact SKU matching has to win Live search dropdown – type in the box and watch results appear before you finish Traditional Results First, AI Results After AI Search never replaces the results your search already finds — it adds to them. Every search runs in three steps, in this order: Exact matches — a query that matches a product SKU or an exact product title is always the first result. Traditional keyword results — everything WordPress and WooCommerce search would normally find (products literally containing your search words) comes next, ranked by keyword relevance instead of publish date. AI results — only below those, semantic matches are added: products that mean the same thing even when they use different words. So if a user searches for something that literally exists on your site, they see exactly what they would see without the plugin — just better ordered. The AI layer only ever extends the results with products the traditional search missed. Installing AI Search will not change or hide the results your customers already find today. Search As You Type (new in 1.33.0) Two optional blocks bring live results to your site, without sending your visitors to a results page first: AI Search Box — a search field that shows results in a dropdown as the user types: thumbnail, product title and price on a single row. AI Search Button — a search icon for your header or menu that opens a full-screen search overlay. Both are Gutenberg blocks. Open any page, template or header in the editor, click the + button, search for “AI Search”, and place the one you want – there is nothing to configure to get started. They follow the same “traditional first” rule as the results page: keyword and SKU matches appear instantly on every keystroke, and AI suggestions are added underneath when typing pauses. Try the live search demo – three real catalogues, type anything you like. This keeps your quota intact. Keystrokes cost nothing — only the pause triggers a single AI request. A ten-character search uses one embedding, not ten. Both blocks read your theme’s own colours, fonts and corner radius, so they look like part of your site rather than something bolted on, on light and dark themes alike. They are fully keyboard and screen-reader accessible. And they are entirely optional: place one where you want it, or place none and nothing about your site changes. Key Features Search As You Type: Optional search box and search button blocks with a live results dropdown — keyword matches instantly, AI suggestions on pause. WooCommerce Product Search: Full product catalog indexing — titles, short and long descriptions, SKUs, categories, tags, and product attributes (size, color, material, etc.). Pre-configured defaults so you can go live in minutes. Understands Meaning, Not Just Keywords: Semantic search means “cozy winter sweater” matches your “merino wool pullover”. Long-tail and descriptive queries stop returning empty pages. Traditional Results Are Never Lost: Keyword matches always rank above AI suggestions — the AI extends your search results, it never replaces them. Cross-Lingual & Multilingual: Works with 100+ languages — Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and more. International stores get consistent search quality across every language, and an English query can still match content in other languages. SKU & Attribute Matching: Customers can search by SKU fragments, attribute values, or technical specs and still find the right product. Smart Fallback System: 4-tier fallback ensures users never hit a zero-result page — if AI search finds nothing, standard WordPress search takes over automatically. No OpenAI Account Required: Uses our free embedding service (up to 10,000 embeddings per site). Works out of the box for most stores. Bring Your Own API Key: Optionally use your own OpenAI API key for unlimited indexing. Bulk Embedding Generation: Index your entire existing catalog in one click, filtered by post type or category. Quota Management: Real-time monitoring of AI service usage and limits (v1.14.0+). Works Beyond Products Too: Same intelligent search for blog posts, pages, and any public custom post type. ACF Compatible: Index Advanced Custom Fields data for deeper product metadata search. Tunable Similarity Threshold: Fine-tune how strict or broad search results are, per store. Intelligent Caching: Fast results with automatic local caching. Perfect For WooCommerce stores with large or varied product catalogs Fashion & apparel stores where users describe products in their own words (“something flowy for summer”) Electronics & home goods stores with complex technical specs and model numbers Books, media, and marketplaces with thousands of titles International stores selling in multiple languages Membership sites, knowledge bases, and directories — any content-heavy WordPress site How It Works Each product in your WooCommerce catalog is converted into a numeric “meaning fingerprint” (called an embedding) that captures its title, description, SKU, categories, tags, and attributes. When a user searches, the plugin first pins exact SKU/title matches, then lists every traditional keyword match (what your search finds today), ranked by relevance. The query then gets its own meaning fingerprint, which is compared against every product’s fingerprint. The closest semantic matches are appended below the traditional results — extra products the keyword search missed, never replacements for it. If nothing at all is found, a multi-tier fallback kicks in so users never hit an empty results page. Embeddings are generated automatically when you publish or update products — no manual work after setup. Learn More Visit our website for documentation, demos, and examples: https://wp-search.ai/ Browse technical documentation, see live demos of the plugin in action, and learn best practices for AI-powered search. Usage Your existing WooCommerce search form (and the default WordPress search) are automatically upgraded — no theme or template changes required. Manage settings, switch providers, and monitor quota via the AI Search menu in your WordPress admin. External Service This plugin connects with: OpenAI Embeddings API: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/embeddings Custom Node.js Embedding Service Please read more here: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/embeddings

Relevanssi replaces the standard WordPress search with a better search engine, with lots of features and configurable options. You’ll get better results, better presentation of results – your users will thank you. This is the free version of Relevanssi. There’s also Relevanssi Premium, which has added features. For more information about Premium, see Relevanssi.com. Do note that using Relevanssi may require large amounts (hundreds of megabytes) of database space (for a reasonable estimate, multiply the size of your wp_posts database table by three). If your hosting setup has a limited amount of space for database tables, using Relevanssi may cause problems. In those cases use of Relevanssi cannot be recommended. Key features Search results sorted in the order of relevance, not by date. Fuzzy matching: match partial words, if complete words don’t match. Find documents matching either just one search term (OR query) or require all words to appear (AND query). Search for phrases with quotes, for example “search phrase”. Create custom excerpts that show where the hit was made, with the search terms highlighted. Highlight search terms in the documents when user clicks through search results. Search comments, tags, categories and custom fields. Multisite friendly. bbPress support. Gutenberg friendly. Advanced features Adjust the weighting for titles, tags and comments. Log queries, show most popular queries and recent queries with no hits. Restrict searches to categories and tags using a hidden variable or plugin settings. Index custom post types and custom taxonomies. Index the contents of shortcodes. Google-style “Did you mean?” suggestions based on successful user searches. Support for WPML multi-language plugin and Polylang. Support for s2member membership plugin, Members, Groups, Simple Membership and other membership plugins. Advanced filtering to help hacking the search results the way you want. Search result throttling to improve performance on large databases. Disable indexing of post content and post titles with a simple filter hook. Premium features (only in Relevanssi Premium) Indexing attachment content (PDF, Office, Open Office). Improved spelling correction in “Did you mean?” suggestions. Searching across multiple sites in the same multisite installation. Search and index user profiles. Search and index taxonomy term pages (categories, tags, custom taxonomies). Search and index arbitrary columns in wp_posts MySQL table. Assign weights to any post types and taxonomies. Assign extra weight to new posts. Let the user choose between AND and OR searches, use + and – operator (AND and NOT). Export and import settings. WP CLI commands. Related posts. Redirects for searches. Thanks Cristian Damm for tag indexing, comment indexing, post/page exclusion and general helpfulness. Marcus Dalgren for UTF-8 fixing. Warren Tape for 2.5.5 fixes. Mohib Ebrahim for relentless bug hunting. John Calahan for extensive 4.0 beta testing.