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Post: Relevanssi – A Better Search – By Mikko Saari
Relevanssi – A Better Search Solution for WordPress
At MiltonMarketing.com, we use Relevanssi, a powerful WordPress plugin developed by Mikko Saari, to enhance the search functionality on our site. It provides an efficient, customizable, and much-needed improvement over the default WordPress search.
Why Choose Relevanssi?
Relevanssi allows you to assign custom relevancy scores to search queries, ensuring users get the most relevant results. It sorts search results by relevance, not by date, improving user experience significantly. Whether you run a blog or a business site, this plugin is a game changer.
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Key Features of Relevanssi:
- Relevance-based search: Results are sorted by relevance instead of recency, providing better outcomes for users.
- Fuzzy matching: It can match partial words when full words don’t match.
- Search capabilities: Supports complex queries using AND/OR operators and exact phrases with quotation marks.
- Highlighting: Highlights search terms in documents for easier navigation through search results.
- Custom excerpts: Shows snippets of where the search terms appear, enhancing clarity.
- Multisite support: Handles search across multiple WordPress sites.
Advanced Features:
- Custom weight settings: Assign weights to titles, tags, comments, or custom post types for improved ranking control.
- Search throttling: Helps manage performance when dealing with large databases.
- Search result filtering: Allows you to modify search results to your preference.
For advanced users, Relevanssi can index custom post types, taxonomies, and even the contents of shortcodes, giving you full control over your search functionality. Additionally, features like logging user queries and Google-style ‘Did you mean?’ suggestions add further customization to the user experience.
Relevanssi Premium Features:
The premium version offers even more power:
- Indexing of PDFs and user profiles.
- Improved spelling correction in the “Did you mean?” suggestions.
- Multisite searches and taxonomy term indexing.
- Customizable weights for post types and taxonomies, allowing for more personalized search results.
However, be mindful that Relevanssi may require more database space due to its indexing processes. Make sure your hosting setup can handle it before installation.
For more details and to try Relevanssi, visit their official site.
By leveraging Relevanssi, we’ve enhanced our website’s search experience, giving users better results, more customization, and faster access to the content they’re looking for(Relevanssi)(WinningWP)(WordPress.org)(Learn WordPress with WPLift).
Top issues and resolutions with Relevanssi WordPress search plugin:
1. High Database Usage
Issue: Relevanssi can consume large amounts of database space, especially on sites with many posts. This can lead to performance issues, especially on shared hosting setups. Fix: You can mitigate this by limiting what content is indexed. Go to Settings > Relevanssi > Indexing and disable indexing for less essential content like comments or tags. You can also throttle search results using the advanced settings to reduce server load(Common Ninja)(FacetWP).
2. Complicated Setup for Advanced Features
Issue: Many users find it difficult to configure advanced features like custom weighting or multisite search, which can lead to ineffective results if not set up correctly. Fix: For custom weight settings, you can adjust relevance by going to Settings > Relevanssi > Searching and manually altering the weight for titles, content, tags, and more. For multisite setups, ensure that only necessary sites are indexed to avoid overwhelming the database. Consulting the documentation or hiring a developer can help with complex setups(Open Ecommerce)(SearchWP).
3. Search Results Not Displaying Properly (Snippets or Missing Results)
Issue: Sometimes, custom excerpts or snippets don’t display correctly, or certain posts don’t appear in the search results. Fix: Try disabling the “Create custom search result snippets” feature in Settings > Relevanssi > Excerpts and Highlights. If the issue persists, you can clear and rebuild the search index under Indexing. Ensure that all necessary post types and fields are being indexed(FacetWP)(Open Ecommerce).
Addressing these issues should improve Relevanssi’s performance and user experience on your site.
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About the Author: Bernard Aybout (Virii8)
