Better Search Pro for Tunable WordPress Search

Better Search replaces WordPress’s default search and works with theme search forms without code edits or a custom search template. Better Search Pro includes controls for matching and ranking, plus indexing and integration options.

Match and rank content

Sort results by relevance or date, set a relevance threshold, and adjust how titles, content, and other fields affect ranking. Search can cover public post types and fields such as excerpts, metadata, authors, tags, taxonomies, and comments. Pro adds fuzzy matching, post slug searches, and a LIKE-based fallback. Optional recency weighting is available and disabled by default.

FULLTEXT indexes and multisite

Better Search adds MySQL FULLTEXT indexes to the wp_posts table for post_content, post_title, and combined title and content searches. These indexes power relevance-based search and are required for its full functionality. On multisite installations, activation adds the indexes to each blog. If existing custom-table indexes need updating for optional recency weighting, run the one-time backfill from Tools.

Search across website capabilities

REST API integration makes search available in WordPress REST responses. AJAX Live Search can display suggestions as visitors type, while a heatmap of popular searches can be displayed with a widget or shortcode. Custom templates and CSS let you adapt result presentation to the theme. The plugin also includes a profanity filter, translation-ready capabilities, and internal caching; it works with WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.

WPML and Polylang are supported. With TranslatePress, cached results follow the active language, and core REST search responses and live-search suggestions use that language. TranslatePress translates displayed results with the page rather than creating a separate index of translated text. If search-term highlighting prevents a title from being fully translated, disable highlighting.

Optional AI answers

Better Search Pro can provide AI answers grounded in Better Search results, with source links, answer caching, usage limits, and a content gaps report. Its WP-CLI commands support AI questions, answer-cache management, and content gaps.

Install and activate

Install Better Search on the WordPress website and activate it. On multisite, activation adds the relevant FULLTEXT indexes to each blog. Then review search options, relevance controls, searchable fields, and optional features such as live search or the profanity filter.