Instant Search – Turn Search Into Sales vs Relevanssi – A Better Search

Instant Search adds a search form to your WordPress site. Visitors see results the moment they start typing. No waiting, no page reloads. They can also search by voice: just tap the microphone and speak. Works with any theme and WooCommerce out of the box: shops, blogs, portfolios, directories. Add [instant_search] to any page, post, widget, or header to display the search form. 👉 Instant Search Pro is here. Add to Cart in search results, direct checkout, Quick View modal, zero-results rescue, conversion analytics and more. See Pro » Features Live search: results appear instantly as visitors type, no page reload Voice search: tap the microphone and speak instead of typing Five layouts: List, Grid, Compact, Big Cards, and Masonry Inline or overlay mode: show results under the search bar or in a full overlay WooCommerce ready: search products by title, content, excerpt, and SKU. Add to cart and direct checkout from search results. Show product details: price, sale badge, stock status, and star ratings right in the results Add to Cart & Buy Now: visitors can buy directly from the search dropdown Quick View: product gallery, description, and variations in a popup Wishlist & Compare: save products or compare up to 4 side by side, no extra plugins Variation selector: pick size, color, etc. right inside search results Zero-results rescue: “Did you mean?” suggestions, best-seller fallback, or a custom message Pinned results & boost rules: pin products to specific keywords, boost best-sellers, newest, or featured items Search everywhere: taxonomies, product attributes, custom fields, and ACF Synonyms & typo tolerance: “laptop” finds “notebook,” and “shooes” still finds shoes Exclude & filter: hide out-of-stock, hide parent products, restrict to logged-in users, exclude by taxonomy Recently viewed: show the visitor’s last viewed products when search is empty Search analytics: top search terms, click-through rate, cart conversions, zero-results report Searches-per-day chart: daily volume with CTR overlay for the last 30 days Weekly email report: top searches summary delivered every Monday CSV export: download all search data for external analysis Floating search button: always-visible search on every page Keyboard shortcut: Cmd/Ctrl+K opens search from anywhere Search history: shows the visitor’s recent queries Auto-focus: cursor jumps to search on page load Brand colors: tint the UI to match your brand Dark mode: Light, Dark, or Auto theme preset Open animations: smooth motion when results appear Custom CSS: full control for pixel-perfect tweaks Responsive: separate width controls for desktop, tablet, and phone Works with any theme: tested with Divi, Elementor, Rey, Astra, GeneratePress, Kadence, and block themes Self-hosted & private: no external services, no data leaves your server Voice Search for WordPress Voice search is no longer a nice-to-have. Mobile shoppers expect it, and visitors with disabilities depend on it. Instant Search is one of the only WordPress plugins that includes voice search for free. Visitors tap the microphone, speak, and see results instantly. It works on Chrome, Edge, Safari, and all modern mobile browsers. No setup, no accounts, no data leaves your server. Why Instant Search? Your default WordPress search is losing you sales. A visitor searches for something, the whole page reloads, they get a list of blue links, and half the time they just leave. Instant Search fixes that. Results appear the moment they type, with product images, prices, Add to cart, direct checkout and more. Misspell something? They still get results. Don’t want to type at all? They tap the mic and speak. Stores using live search see more products found, more pages visited, and fewer visitors bouncing from a dead-end search result. If your site has a search bar, this is what it should be doing. Contributors Marincas Marius Mugurel – www.marincas.net

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.