Arabic Search Enhancement vs Relevanssi – A Better Search

Arabic Search Enhancement is a production-ready WordPress plugin that dramatically improves search functionality for Arabic content. It addresses the common problem where Arabic searches fail due to variations in diacritics, letter forms, and typing styles. Key Features Smart Arabic Text Normalization – Removes diacritics and normalizes letter forms for comprehensive search results Elementor Search Widget Support – Full compatibility with Elementor’s search widgets and AJAX functionality Multi-term Search Support – Handles multiple Arabic search terms with intelligent AND logic Performance Optimized – Built-in caching system for fast repeated searches RTL Interface Support – Complete right-to-left admin interface for Arabic users Configurable Settings – Full admin panel for customizing search behavior Developer Friendly – Built with SOLID principles and modern PHP practices Search Improvements Before: Searching for “مكتوب” won’t find “مَكْتُوب” (with diacritics) After: Smart normalization finds all variations automatically Before: “الكتاب” won’t match “ألكتاب” (different Alef forms) After: All Alef variations (أ إ آ ٱ) treated as same letter Normalization Rules Diacritics Removal: All Tashkeel marks (َ ُ ِ ّ ْ ً ٌ ٍ etc.) Alef Unification: أ إ آ ٱ → ا Taa Marbuta: ة → ه Yaa Normalization: ى → ي Hamza Variations: ؤ → و, ئ → ي Tatweel Removal: ـ (kashida) Technical Highlights SQL-level Processing – Database queries optimized for Arabic text Intelligent Caching – Performance monitoring and optimization WordPress Integration – Uses WordPress hooks and APIs properly Security First – Input sanitization and output escaping Translation Ready – Full internationalization support Perfect For Arabic news websites and blogs Educational institutions with Arabic content Government websites in Arabic-speaking countries E-commerce sites with Arabic product descriptions Elementor-powered websites with Arabic search functionality Any WordPress site serving Arabic-speaking users External Services The plugin does not transmit search data or analytics to any external servers; all processing and storage stay inside your WordPress database. Technical Details System Requirements WordPress 5.0 or higher PHP 7.4 or higher MySQL 5.6 or higher Architecture Built with SOLID principles PSR-4 autoloading Dependency injection Interface-based design Comprehensive error handling Performance SQL-level normalization Intelligent caching system Minimal resource usage Database query optimization Support For support, bug reports, or feature requests, please contact the developer or visit the plugin support forum. Privacy This plugin collects and stores anonymous search analytics data to improve search functionality. The following information is collected: Search queries (anonymized and used for statistics only) Search result counts and language detection Search timestamps (for trend analysis) No personal information is collected, including: * User names, emails, or IP addresses * Personal identifiable information (PII) * User browsing behavior outside of search functionality All data collection can be disabled through the plugin settings. Data is stored locally in your WordPress database and is not transmitted to external servers. For complete privacy transparency, you may review the source code at the plugin repository.

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.