Searching for a Better WordPress Search

Follow Along

v.gd/wpsearch

What This Talk Will Cover

What’s Wrong with Search
Plugins & Services to Improve Search
Q&A

About Me

Russell Heimlich on a pogo stick in a suit

I’ve been playing with WordPress since 2007

Screenshot of Russell Heimlich's first blog post

Lead Developer at BillyPenn.com

I joined Twitter before @twitter Joined Twitter

@kingkool68 joined Twitter in December 2006, @twitter joined February 2007

When I’m not coding…

What’s Wrong with Search?

Common Complaints of WordPress’ Search

Slow
No options/customizations
Irrelevant results

Search is Hard!

Look through all posts in the database
Find posts matching keyword(s)
Determine most relevant results
Output results via a template
Do all of this in under a few seconds!

WordPress is designed for broad compatibility

“It just works” under all kinds of server configurations
Commodity hardware can be slow/constrained
MySQL is not a search engine

WordPress is not a search engine!

How Does a WordPress Search Work?

Pre 3.7

Search for “term”

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.id
FROM   wp_posts
WHERE  1 = 1
       AND (( ( wp_posts.post_title LIKE '%term%' )
               OR ( wp_posts.post_content LIKE '%term%' ) ))
       AND wp_posts.post_type IN ( 'post', 'page', 'attachment' )
       AND ( wp_posts.post_status = 'publish'
              OR wp_posts.post_author = 1
                 AND wp_posts.post_status = 'private' )
ORDER  BY wp_posts.post_date DESC
LIMIT  0, 10

Find posts where the post title or the post content contains “term”
Sort the results by post date in descending order (reverse chronological)

Search for “search term”

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.id
FROM   wp_posts
WHERE  1 = 1
       AND ( ( ( wp_posts.post_title LIKE '%search%' )
                OR ( wp_posts.post_content LIKE '%search%' ) )
             AND ( ( wp_posts.post_title LIKE '%term%' )
                    OR ( wp_posts.post_content LIKE '%term%' ) ) )
       AND wp_posts.post_type IN ( 'post', 'page', 'attachment' )
       AND ( wp_posts.post_status = 'publish'
              OR wp_posts.post_author = 1
                 AND wp_posts.post_status = 'private' )
ORDER  BY wp_posts.post_date DESC
LIMIT  0, 10

Find posts where…
1. the post title or the post content contains “search”
2. AND the post title or the post content contains “term”
Sort the results by post date in descending order (reverse chronological)

Trac Ticket #7394

Sorting Search by Relevance

A long time in the making…

Opened July 24, 2008
Closed October 2, 2013
5 Years, 2 months, 8 days!

Screenshot of the New Post admin interface for WordPress version 2.6

From WordPress 3.7 and later searches are sorted by relevancy by default

(except for feeds)

The ordering logic is as follows:

via Changeset 25632

Full sentence matches in post titles
All search terms in post titles
Any search terms in post titles
Full sentence matches in post content

Search for “term”

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_3_posts.id
FROM   wp_3_posts
WHERE  1 = 1
       AND (( ( wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%term%' )
               OR ( wp_3_posts.post_content LIKE '%term%' ) ))
       AND wp_3_posts.post_type IN ( 'post', 'page', 'attachment' )
       AND ( wp_3_posts.post_status = 'publish'
              OR wp_3_posts.post_status = 'private' )
ORDER  BY wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%term%' DESC,
          wp_3_posts.post_date DESC
LIMIT  0, 10

Find posts where the post title or the post content contains “term”
Sort the results by…
1. posts where the post tile contains “term”
2. post date in descending order (reverse chronological)

Search for “search term”

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_3_posts.id
FROM   wp_3_posts
WHERE  1 = 1
       AND ( ( ( wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%search%' )
                OR ( wp_3_posts.post_content LIKE '%search%' ) )
             AND ( ( wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%term%' )
                    OR ( wp_3_posts.post_content LIKE '%term%' ) ) )
       AND wp_3_posts.post_type IN ( 'post', 'page', 'attachment' )
       AND ( wp_3_posts.post_status = 'publish'
              OR wp_3_posts.post_status = 'private' )
ORDER  BY ( CASE
              WHEN wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%search term%' THEN 1
              WHEN wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%search%'
                   AND wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%term%' THEN 2
              WHEN wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%search%'
                    OR wp_3_posts.post_title LIKE '%term%' THEN 3
              WHEN wp_3_posts.post_content LIKE '%search term%' THEN 4
              ELSE 5
            end ),
          wp_3_posts.post_date DESC
LIMIT  0, 10

Find posts where…
1. the post title or the post content contains “search”
2. AND the post title or the post content contains “term”
Sort the results by…
1. posts that contain “search term” in the post title
2. posts that contain “search” AND “term” in the post title
3. posts that contain “search” OR “term” in the post title
4. posts that contain “search term” in the post content
5. post date in descending order (reverse chronological)

GIF Break

Plugins

Pros

Search custom post types, terms, fields
Lots of options to tweak
Search query logging
Free and Premium versions

Cons

Extra load on your server
Performance issues with larger amounts of content
Hard to remember how to spell

Pros

Native to WordPress
Configurable through wp-admin
Search stats
bbPress integration
PDF Indexing
Multiple Search Engines

Cons

Extra load on your server

Screenshot of Google custom search engine plugin page

Pros

Integrates with your theme
Index is built through crawling
Multisite support
Ad free

Cons

Pricing
Cap on queries per year
Google’s Developer Console is confusing

Pricing breakdown of Google Custom Search: $100/year for 20,000 queries through $2,000/year for 500,000 queries

Pros

Drag and drop to reorder results
PDF indexing
Faceted Search
Analytics
Developer API
Two ways to build search index: web crawler or API
No hardware to manage

Cons

Pricing ($249/month or $2,988/year)
Top-query report is enterprise only

A yellow rack server that looks like a piece of cheese

Pros

Your own mini-Google
Self-learning Ranking
XML version of results
OneBox support (i.e. “weather 90210” returns weather results )
Search behind a firewall or authentication
Index 220 content types (PDF, Microsoft Office, databases)

Cons

“If you have to ask you probably can’t afford it” pricing
Manage Google-provided hardware
Highly technical
No WordPress plugin
End of life 2017

Screw It! Just Use Google

Pros

Easy
Free (GitHub Repo)
No maintenance
Just as good as Google

Cons

No customizations
Linking off your site
Not professional?

Except mobile.reuters.com did this!

Pros

Super Flexible
Integrates with WP_Query
Faceted Search
Multisite Support
Proximity/Geograpic Queries
Free (plugin & Elasticsearch software)
Open Source

Cons

~~WP-CLI required~~
Server management required
Highly technical
Aimed at developers

Setting up Elasticsearch & ElasticPress

Set-up Elasticsearch

Amazon’s Elasticsearch service ($15-30/month)
Elastic Cloud Standard ($45/month)
Qbox.io ($12.50/month)
Digital Ocean Droplet* ($5/month)

* Don’t forget to secure Elasticsearch

Install Plugin and WP-CLI

See the ElasticPress plugin page
See WP-CLI.org

Define the address of your Elasticsearch instance

Add the following to wp-config.php with the IP address (and port) of your Elasticsearch instance:

define( 'EP_HOST', 'http://192.168.1.2:9200' );

Start the initial sync

Single site

wp elasticpress index --setup

Multisite

wp elasticpress index --setup --network-wide

Or go through the WordPress Admin

Additional ElasticPress Integrations

ElasticPress WooCommerce - Integrates ElasticPress with WooCommerce
ElasticPress Admin - Use ElasticPress for the backend WordPress admin search
ElasticPress Related Posts - Related posts powered by ElasticPress
Debug Bar ElasticPress - Extends the Debug Bar plugin for usage with ElasticPress

Searching for a Better WordPress Search

Follow Along

What This Talk Will Cover

About Me

I’ve been playing with WordPress since 2007

Lead Developer at BillyPenn.com

I joined Twitter before @twitter Joined Twitter

When I’m not coding…

What’s Wrong with Search?

Common Complaints of WordPress’ Search

Search is Hard!

WordPress is designed for broad compatibility

WordPress is not a search engine!

How Does a WordPress Search Work?

Pre 3.7

Trac Ticket #7394

Sorting Search by Relevance

From WordPress 3.7 and later searches are sorted by relevancy by default

The ordering logic is as follows:

GIF Break

Plugins

Pros

Cons

Pros

Cons

Pros

Cons

Pros

Cons

Pros

Cons

Screw It! Just Use Google

Pros

Cons

Except mobile.reuters.com did this!

Pros

Cons

Setting up Elasticsearch & ElasticPress

Set-up Elasticsearch

Install Plugin and WP-CLI

Define the address of your Elasticsearch instance

Start the initial sync

Or go through the WordPress Admin

Additional ElasticPress Integrations

Which one is right for me?

Small Scale/Low Budget

Medium Scale/Small Business

Large Scale/Enterprise

Heavy Customization

Wrapping up!

Search is hard

WordPress is not a search engine

But there are lots of ways to enhance your site’s search

Thank You!

Questions?