If you have a WordPress website, you are very well aware that the existing search functionality is not competent enough and lacks in many ways. Many areas need improvements to offer a superior user experience to visitors. Visitors find it impressive when they can search website contents easily. They will surely take appropriate actions when they find the website highly-functional, attractive, and user-friendly.
In this post, we will discuss some of the methods you can use to make your WordPress search functionality better and functional. Stay tuned!
Sorting Out Results Based On Relevance
In the older version of WordPress, users can only sort search results by date. Thankfully, WordPress core came with a better idea and introduced a patch to ensure that other sorting options are made available for visitors. Now, post titles that match with a full sentence will be listed first. Then, search terms in the title, but not a full sentence, will be listed next.
Improving the interface
WordPress does not work like Google. The former will omit keyword emphasis if it found matches. However, you can add this feature in the WordPress search by altering parts of the search results.
Preparing your theme
You need to come up with a custom template that will be used by WordPress instead of the default one. You need to ask your developer to make necessary changes by adding the actual code to empower emphasis. The emphasizing feature will emphasize every occurrence of the word/s passed in SEARCH QUERY and return the text. Also, you need to add emphasis to the title and excerpts as well.
Tracking searches
When it comes to tracking the search queries, using Google Analytics is a great idea. Though you have some other options available, Google Analytics will work best for you. What do you need to do? First, you need to login to Google Analytics account, go to Admin- View- View Settings, and turn on the Site Search Tracking toggle.
Now, enter S in the Query Parameter field which is the default query parameter added while using the search function. Once it is done, you can click Save.
In addition to that, websites with multiple categories might need this functionality to refine their searches. Google Analytics can allow you to add tracking facilities on it too.
Are There Any Alternatives?
Yes, there are. Fortunately, there are some alternatives that you can use to improve your WordPress website’s search functionality. These website search alternatives are powerful and versatile tools that have a ton of features to make search better and quick. These alternatives can make things easy for customers when they want to make search queries on the website.
Expertrec is one of the most powerful WordPress site search tools that has carved a niche for itself. It is a widely popular site search tool. Let’s discuss some of the benefits of Expertrec:
- First and foremost, Expertrec supports more than 30 languages. Your website visitors from across the globe can search queries in their native languages without any hassles.
- One of the limitations of the default WordPress search is the lack of an autocomplete function. However, you can use Expertrec’s custom search to enable autocomplete.
- Furthermore, the site search crawler of Expertrec will also pick up the right image for a search result. You can enable or disable images in search results by visiting the settings.
- Also, you can enable spell-correct in your WordPress search by simply installing the plugin. It is a default setting across all plans.
- If you want to check out recent searches, you can do that by just enabling the Recent Searches feature.
- Facets can help you to find relevant articles fast and easily. You can enable facets in WordPress search results to find articles you are looking for.
- With the custom Expertrec WordPress search plugin, you can also search for different types of files such as PDF, DOCS, and others.
- Also, you can customize your WordPress search layout’s look and feel by simply visiting Look and Feel > Input Box.
Conclusion
The WordPress search bar can make a huge impact on your revenues and shares and you must leave no stones unturned to improve the functionality of it. Expertrec is the best plugin that can offer a superior user experience to users visiting your website.
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