Why do people use website search forms in the first place? This is because they are looking for immediate and related results that cannot be obtained by browsing the website or using navigation.

sometimes these search results provide answers to their questions (such as information about the company’s return policy) or lists of matching products or content (such as blog posts related to page builder plug-ins). But whatever they are looking for, one thing is certain:

Visitors want your WordPress search form to provide results quickly and accurately.

this makes sense when you look at consumer behavior as a whole. Google has set an almost impossible standard for online search. According to SparkToro, more than half of all searches in Google are zero-click. Basically, Google has made search so efficient that people usually don’t need to visit websites to get answers to their questions.

of course, visitors to your site do not use internal search to expect or want zero-click results. They are using search to find other parts of your site to explore. But what your WordPress search and Google search have in common is that consumers want to be fast, convenient, and find relevant results from both of them.

has only one problem: the search function that comes with WordPress is not very good.

this is why in this tutorial, we will explore everything you need to know to optimize your visitors’ WordPress search experience: how important is

1. internal search? How does
2. add search to your WordPress site? how does
3. improve the internal WordPress search experience? how important is the

internal search in Google Analytics how important is it?

if you design the site in the right way, visitors will naturally follow the path you laid out in front of them. A well-organized menu also helps.

means that internal search plays an important role in this regard.

regards WordPress search as a quick pass for your website. When your search function executes as it should, it can take your visitors from step 1 to step 5 in a matter of seconds.

this is especially useful for WordPress sites that contain a lot of content. Here are some examples: online stores such as

e-commerce

Nordic Ware can help visitors access from the home page:

Nordic Ware: home page with a search bar in the title

can get a narrower list of products simply by using the search bar in the upper right corner of the site:

Nordic Ware: search results page

by always displaying the product search form Visitors do not need to sift through the menus or categories of the store to find the specific items they are buying.

blogs, podcasts, and news sites

have large content repositories (such as 36 pages of WordPree tutorial tips (and growing)) will benefit from the search bar:

by placing a content Center-specific search form at the top of the list of articles Readers can find the topic they are looking for faster than scrolling through 36 pages: the WordPress search bar at the top of the

Resource Center list,

, which contains a lot of content, can become difficult to navigate. Because you want to keep your blog page short to maintain a high load speed, it’s not a good idea to increase the number of articles that appear.

instead, the search bar will help your visitors browse articles that have nothing to do with their current interests more effectively.

online catalog site

search is the first thing visitors do on sites with online catalog lists (such as real estate, travel, professional services, etc.), like this example from Trulia:

Trulia: home page search attributes

search elements are always easy to start. For example, specify a location, person name, or position. But the results page always allows users to filter results as needed:

Trulia: sample search results page

knowledge base

search is a useful component of the help center and knowledge base for products such as Elementor:

Elementor: knowledge base article topics and counting

, search can help users find answers to questions faster than manual search categories:

Elementor: search for “templates”

in documents in many cases The problems encountered by users when using SaaS products can be easily solved by users themselves. If you want to keep real-time chat and help desk support away from problems that are easy to solve, make your knowledge base easy to search.

if there are a lot of things on your site, don’t assume that navigation will help visitors work their way. Create a search experience similar to an express pass so that they can get exactly where they need and want to go. How

Bottom Line

adds search to your WordPress site

you have several options to implement and enable basic WordPress search for your site:

Use your theme to add WordPress search to the menu

depending on the WordPress theme you installed, you can add the search to your menu with just a few clicks. In this example, I used the Astra theme, which, by the way, turned out to be very fast! The first thing

needs to do is go to appearance & gt; customization:

WordPress-navigate to the custom menu

and then go to the title & gt; main menu.

WordPress-Custom menu

under the last item in the menu, select search from the drop-down menu.

WordPress-add a search bar

to the menu, which will add a search icon and bar as the last element of the navigation menu.

WordPress-search bar with added theme settings

when using other WordPress topics, this search activation setting may not be in the same location as your theme customizer. If it is available, you will find it under the title setting. Otherwise, you must add it manually using one of the following options.

uses the WordPress gadget to add the search

WordPress gadget so that you can add content to dedicated blocks in elements around the content, such as sidebars and footers.

one of the blocks of content that you can create using the WordPress gadget is the search bar.

first finds the widget under the appearance menu:

WordPress-find the gadget menu

you can find all the available widget sections here. Depending on the theme or template you are using, you may only see a sidebar or footer, or you may see a more comprehensive choice, as follows:

gadget example

anyway, what you need to do now is to decide where you want the search bar to appear.

assumes that you plan to post new blog content every day and know that archiving will grow rapidly. Therefore, it would be useful to have a search bar on each blog page.

scrolls to the bottom of the widget and finds a gadget called search: the

search gadget

you can add it by clicking it and choosing which part to add it to As follows:

uses the drop-down menu to add the search gadget

or you can drag and drop the gadget to the section you want it to appear in:

add the search gadget

by drag-and-drop once you put it where you want, give it a name:

name your search gadget

to save your changes Then visit your site to make sure it looks what you want it to look like: the

search bar is added to the blog

and you can now see that the search bar is at the top of the blog sidebar for your readers to use.

uses the WordPress tool to add search to the main content of your site

while it is useful to place the search bar in the elements that always exist on the site, you may also find reasons to include it in the actual content of the page.

has several ways to do this:

Use the WordPress Editor
The

Gutenberg editor certainly makes it easier to design more creative page layouts without relying on HTML or short code.

with the WordPress editor, one such element that you can now add to the page is the search widget: when

uses this option in the Gutenberg search gadget block

, you have more control over how the search bar is displayed. For example, you can change the title of the search bar, placeholder text, and buttons:

uses the Gutenberg custom search ​​ search bar

and you can even use the custom CSS class to change the style of the search block.

Use the page builder plug-in

for those who prefer to use drag-and-drop page builder plug-ins, such as Elementor, you can also access the search gadget using the plug-in of your choice. The process is similar to what you did to Gutenberg. After

opens a new page or article and activates the Elementor editor, search your Elements list for the WordPress search gadget: the search gadget in

Elementor,

, drags the search element to where you want it to appear on the page. For example, this is a 404 page that helps users get back on track through the search bar:

‘s sample 404 page with a search bar

, as you can see, the page builder plug-in gives you more control over where the WordPress search bar is displayed than Gutenberg, allowing you to layer it on top of other content.

Working with themes

in some cases, you may find that a topic and template automatically add search to your site content. However, the type of theme that does this tends to be highly specialized, such as the residential real estate theme:

Residential Real Estate theme demo

because searching on these catalog listing sites can become complex, so it makes sense for theme developers to build functionality into templates. The

booking site theme is another example of an already built-in search feature, like this demonstration from the Travel Booking theme: the

travel reservation theme demonstrates that

can imagine that building search capabilities into your WordPress themes and templates will save you a lot of trouble without having to build something so complex yourself. If the topic is optimized for performance, so should its search engine solution (again, worry less about one thing).

uses code to add WordPress search

there is another way to add a basic search form to your site, but it requires you to be familiar with coding.

to do this, go to skin & gt; theme Editor:

theme Editor

what you need to do here is to create a short code for the search bar using the functions.php theme file:

functions.php theme file

at the bottom of the file, add the following code snippet:

replaces “shortcodename” with your own search form name. Make sure it is all lowercase and there are no spaces, numbers, or symbols. After you update the file, you can start using short codes on your Web site.

add_shortcode( 'shortcodename', 'get_search_form');

Here’s an example:

, the custom short code that

uses to add search bars to your site, adds short code in the same way as any regular text is added to your site. Remember to enclose it in square brackets [].

although you won’t be able to see the search bar in the editor, look at the preview of the page, and you’ll see it at the front of the site:

adds a short code search bar

, although this is a quick edit, which is good for the purposes of this article, best practice recommends never editing your theme code, but instead creating a WordPress subtheme.

description of WordPress search restrictions

you can use a number of options to add basic WordPress search capabilities to your site. But is that enough?

may not unless you have a very small site or you want to limit search to your blog. Let me explain.

WordPress’s native search form will view the following types of content in your web pages and blog posts:

page title

• paragraph text
• picture title
• picture description
• picture instead of text
• file name
• , as you can imagine, this is very limited for your users. First, if you need to retrieve results from other types of pages or content on the site, such as WooCommerce products, the basic search form will not display matching results. The same is true of other elements of your site, such as the

gadget

• user reviews
• categories and tags
• Picture Library title, description and replacement text
• custom fields
• and more
• WordPress search is not limited to the displayed results. It is also limited by its size. The larger your site, the more difficult it will be for your database to process the results, and the longer it will take to provide these results to visitors.

, what if you need something more powerful and sustainable than WordPress search allows?

, let’s take a look at some ways to improve it. How

improves the internal WordPress search experience

if at least one of the following applies to you, you should read the next section on fixing WordPress search:

there are more than a thousand pages of content or products on your site.

1. your data shows that internal search is popular, but it doesn’t bring about any transformation.
2. your search form gets a lot of action, but your web hosting server is trying to process the request (that is, it takes a few seconds to load the results).
3. you want to expand your site without having to worry about failing you (and your visitors) somewhere in the search process.
4. basic search didn’t cut it. You need something more advanced and flexible to handle all kinds of searches made by users. Is
5. ready to dive? There are six important steps you can take to improve WordPress search:

Tip 1: create a custom search page

instead of leaving visitors a simple search bar to help them navigate your site, create a custom search page?

, for example, search for “denim”

in the website menu. Your visitors are not unfamiliar with using search, but you can improve the experience through a dedicated search page.

to create a custom page, you need to access your website through the FTP or file manager backend. After

enters the WordPress database, you will look for the following file path:

page.php is a file that defines the basic structure of the web page. In other words, it is a page template. What we need to do now is to create a template for your search page.

Note: if you see a file named search.php, please ignore it. This file specifies how the search results page is displayed, not the initial search page.

copies page.php and names the new file searchpage.php. Then, open it for editing. Sample page.php code copied from

to the new file

most of the code in this file needs to be replaced because a typical web page or blog post is defined here. Instead, you need to split it so that it contains only what you need on the search page. This is an example of how I build a search page:

WordPress Codex provides more guidance on what you can and cannot do when creating a custom search page. However, if you like the results I’m going to show you, the only thing you may need to change is what appears between

Search Our Shop
Welcome to the online shop of awesomeness! Here you will find all kinds of products to revolutionize how you work, live, and play.
Use the search form below to get yourself moving in the right direction.

and:

after saving the searchpage.php template and returning WordPress. We now need to create a page called search.

gives the page a title and opens Page Properties on the sidebar. You will see the template for the search page you just created:
has created the search page template

  

selects the search template and publishes the page. You will now see it on the real-time URL. It should be: https://yourdomainname.com/search/. And, if you use something similar to the code above, it generates a page that looks like this: the sample custom search page in
WordPress

  

creates and publishes this page, and you can do whatever you want. You can add it to your menu or link to it elsewhere. Just make sure that the link is placed where visitors can easily see it.
Tip 2: make your WordPress search more than just pages and articles

  although the above tips provide you with a new location to run WordPress search, it doesn't help solve the problem of search content types. Fortunately for us, there are many plug-ins that can solve this problem.


Upgrade basic WordPress search with WP extended search
if you just want to comb through more content and metadata on the site, then WP Extended Search is a good choice.
Using this plug-in, your visitors will be able to retrieve results from

  

articles,
pages,



media files,
categories,
tags,
excerpts from
metadata (such as author names)
, a lightweight and easy-to-configure plug-in that improves basic search capabilities for small business websites and blogs.
Use Advanced Woo Search to upgrade WooCommerce search



if you have an e-commerce site, you can use the Advanced Woo Search plug-in instead. When
is enabled, you can place the WooCommerce search form anywhere on the site. If you want it to replace all existing basic WordPress search forms, the plug-in has a quick "Seamless integration" option that automatically replaces them for you.
you can also manually add the form as a gadget or short code. It's up to you.
this form will be similar to a basic WordPress form: the
Advanced Woo Search sample
there are two main differences between this form and the one you used previously.

  

starts with a form searching your WooCommerce product content and metadata, including titles, SKU, excerpts, categories, tags, and ID.
this is the second difference:
Advanced Woo Search: real-time search results
when your visitors start entering their search queries, matching results will appear. This is called "real-time" search, and because the plug-in uses AJAX, it can happen immediately.

  

if these options look promising, but you are looking for a more powerful or faster upgrade for your WordPress search form, read on.
Tip 3: improve the way WordPress search results are displayed
next, let's talk about what you can do to improve the way you display search results to visitors.

  this is why you can't skip this prompt: the default display of


search results
by default, WordPress search displays results similar to this page. "search results: [keywords]" appears at the top of the page, followed by each matching page or article. If there is a characteristic picture (such as the jeans above), it will be fully displayed.

  

is followed by an excerpt: the
search results show a larger image and an excerpt
, which is just a match. Imagine how difficult it would be to browse this search results page if there were several "cowboy" matches, let alone dozens or hundreds.

  

to solve this problem, we will look for a WordPress plug-in to help.
Using Ivory Search to improve the appearance of forms
like the plug-ins mentioned above, Ivory Search allows you to choose which types of content and metadata search results to extract from. However, with this, you don't have to choose between basic pages and publishing data or e-commerce. You can choose junk here:
Ivory Search sets
another noteworthy hint about this plug-in is that it allows you to customize the search form along with the rest of the site:

  

Ivory Search: custom design
in the theme customizer you can control all aspects of the search form:

  

color
text

style
table animation
You can also configure content such as real-time AJAX search and let your visitors see their matches in real time:
's real-time search results from a custom search bar and Ivory Search
Loader image

see this plug-in as the next step in WordPress search.

  

Use Ajax search to customize the way search results are displayed
now, it's not just the appearance of your search form that leaves a mark on your visitors. Your handling of the results display will also affect their experience.
uses Ajax Search Lite and Pro plug-ins, and you will really give them a smarter and faster search experience.
here are some examples of what you can do: the
Ajax search plug-in: the search behavior
Behaviors makes the search experience more efficient for visitors, such as opening the search form as soon as they start typing and redirecting them to the search results, whether they click the return key or the magnifying glass icon.

  

Ajax search plug-in: autocomplete and recommend
autocomplete and suggest using the Google search feature to speed up visitors' search.

  

Ajax search plug-in: keyword highlighting
keyword highlighting is another useful feature that highlights the user's keyword in the matching results. This makes it easier to find more relevant results.

  

this is an example of how it might be displayed: the keyword
highlighted in
search results the plug-in also allows you to specify exactly how the results are displayed: how the results page is laid out and which elements should be displayed (such as featured images + excerpts + author names).

  

in addition, you can tell the search engine to extract the image from somewhere. For example, if a featured picture is not available, you can request that the first picture on the page be used in the search results.
you can also decide how to crop and size each image. In this way, you can make the size and appearance of the search results page easier to manage-which becomes especially important as the capacity within the site increases. One more thing about
: this plug-in can not only help you make your search results look better. It also speeds them up in front of your visitors: the
Ajax search plug-in: performance optimization to speed up search
you can do three performance optimizations in this plug-in: the

  

application custom AJAX handler.
disables image cropping.



loads JavaScript in the footer. By configuring these three settings,
can help your Web server not be flooded with successive search requests.
In other words, this is just the tip of the iceberg to optimize WordPress search speed.



Tip 4: speed up WordPress search
although the appearance and search capabilities of the WordPress search form are important, the speed with which it occurs is also important.

  Use Elasticsearch to get ultra-fast and complex search functions


at some point, the WordPress search plug-in and your MySQL database will no longer apply. When your site's search queries proliferate, the only way to ensure the best search experience is to use Elasticsearch.
Elasticsearch is an open source search and analysis engine known for its speed, stability, and scalability-it's just part of the Elastic stack. When combined with Logstash (for data processing) and Kibana (for data visualization and management) Elasticsearch supports your site's search engine in ways you've never seen before:
queries for more content types (such as PDF) and metadata
fuzzy matching to reduce "fruitless"



related content recommendations
specific geographic content recommendations
facet (multi-filter) search
faster query processing
real-time access search query data
although Elasticsearch is open source and can be used for free But you need to host Elasticsearch hosting for it (this is not free). You can get this information in a number of ways: the
ElasticPress plug-in enables you to seamlessly integrate ElasticPress search capabilities into your WordPress site. This plug-in is a popular solution that integrates with WordPress hosts that support Elasticsearch.



ElasticPress set

  1. ElasticPress

if you like, you can go directly to the source code: Elastic. You also have several options for deploying search engines.

  

you can get a complete stack and take advantage of its advanced data processing and management tools. This is part of the setup and onboarding process:

  2. Elastic

Elastic: full-stack deployment configuration
more importantly, you can control how the Elasticsearch server is optimized:

  

's choice of deployment optimization
in Elastic is based on the type of query your site will handle, which makes it easy for you to decide how best to accelerate and enhance your search engine.

  

if you want to simplify setup, please use Elastic's site search tool:
Elastic Site search dashboard
then, you will enter this dashboard, after your website has been indexed, you can:

  

use JavaScript code snippet to install your search engine.
customizes how your search engine handles results rankings, weights, and synonyms.



manages content that is eligible to appear in search results.
sets up conversion tracking.
configuration search recommendations.
views your search query data.
is not as powerful as Elastic Stack, but if you're just looking for a high-performance search that is easy to implement and manage, it's a good choice. It's not surprising that
Amazon has its own Elasticsearch service. If you are already using AWS hosting and deployment services, this is a good choice for you. Similar to the above options,



is a managed service that allows you to create a fast search engine with complex query capabilities for your site.

  3. Amazon Elasticsearch

tip 5: cache your search results page
another way to optimize WordPress search speed is to cache search results. By enabling caching, your server will not have to keep processing the same query over and over again. Instead, it will retrieve and display static search results pages, providing visitors with near-instant results. One way for

  to enable caching is to use the WordPress caching plug-in. W3 Total Cache, one of


's most acclaimed plug-ins, has drawn attention to search results page caching, so if you are looking for a caching solution that prioritizes the type of performance optimization you need, start there.
or you can try WP Rocket. Although it does not cache search results pages by default, it creates a cached search results helper plug-in to achieve this exact purpose. Another way for
to enable this feature is to use the Ajax Search Pro plug-in mentioned earlier. I've shown you several ways the Lite version of the plug-in can optimize search performance. The Pro version adds more optimizations, including image pre-caching and search phrase caching.
Tip 6: activate search tracking
in Google Analytics last but not least, remember to activate search tracking in Google Analytics. You can find it under "Administration" & gt; "all site data" & gt; "View Settings".

  activate search tracking


in Google Analytics to turn on field search tracking, switch the switch to "ON". This displays a new field called query parameters. This is the element that defines the search query and results in your URL (and database).

  

Google Analytics's search parameter
in this case, the letter "s" defines the search query on the site. If you are not sure what your search parameters are, run a test search and find the letter or word after the question mark.

  

if your search allows visitors to select categories and filters, you can also enable site search categories. You may need to specify multiple parameters here. After
finishes the search settings in Google Analytics, you will be able to find all your data under "behavior" & gt; "site search". The site search data
in
Google Analytics, like the rest of Google Analytics, gives you plenty of opportunities to figure out what attracts visitors to your site in the first place with

  

. Which search terms were queried by
, but your website failed to provide answers or solutions.



Search for the most content or products.
which search queries bring the most transformations.
more search queries take place on which pages.
pays close attention to what visitors do with search, and you can shape the rest of the live experience for them more effectively.
summary



WordPress search may seem simple if you only need a basic search function to help visitors browse more than a dozen pages.

  you can add simple WordPress search functions to multiple areas of the site, such as headers, menus, sidebars, footers, and even match your content. You can also add these search elements in a number of ways:


your theme settings
a WordPress gadget

page builder plug-in
a prefabricated theme template
code
don't forget: the larger your site, the more complex your navigation becomes, the more you need a solution to enhance WordPress search capabilities to provide visitors with a better user experience. Most of the time, a better user experience will bring you more transformation. In addition, you can use SearchWP to improve WordPress search.
more tips and tutorials on WordPress search: how

adds search bars to WordPress menus
how to create advanced search forms for WordPress custom article types

how to create custom WordPress search forms
how to implement search by category in WordPress how to add Ajax real-time search to your WordPress
how to achieve intelligent search for WooCommerce products
如何在WordPress中实现按类别搜索
如何将Ajax实时搜索添加到您的WordPress
如何实现WooCommerce产品智能搜索


			

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