How to Set Up WordPress Automatic Search

Instructions for setting up WordPress automatic search - Want to add WordPress autocomplete search function to your site? This helps you know that visitors begin typing their queries, and your site will automatically help them complete searches and / or suggest relevant content.

Google, Amazon and many other websites use this method as it provides visitors with a useful search experience. And with the appropriate WordPress autocomplete search plugin, you can add similar functionality to your site.

What will you use to add WordPress autocomplete search function?

After testing some plugins to help you add search directly to WordPress, we settled on Ajax Search Lite because:

Easy to set up.

The free version will work for most websites.

It is very flexible.

It is popular and receives regular updates.

The plugin helps you add suggestions and search engines directly into Google's autocomplete function.

To get started, make sure to install and activate the plugin on your website (this is how to install the WordPress plugin if you need some help).

Once you have activated the plugin, follow these steps to configure your new WordPress autocomplete search function.

Step 1: Select the content to be included in the search

The first thing you want to do is configure what content is eligible to be included in your search suggestions.

For example, maybe you want your proposal to include blog posts, but not pages. If you are using custom post types (like WooCommerce products or event plugins), you can also choose to include that content in your search results.

To make those selections, click on the Ajax Search Lite option in your WordPress dashboard and use the Search option in custom post types to select which content is eligible:

You can also choose which part of the content the plugin looks for. By default, it will search for user keywords in your content:

Title

content

Excerpts

But you can also search for it in the page:

URL Slug

Categories and tags

Custom fields (or specific custom fields or all custom fields)

Step 2: Choose how to display content in the proposed results

By default, the plugin will display a lot of information in the proposed results. It includes:

Title

Excerpts

Featured image

You have complete control over what information is displayed.

If you want to control the image (or turn it off), go to the Image Options tab. Can you turn off Show images in results? Option to disable images. Or, you can use other options to change:

Image size

Where does the image come from?

Similarly, if you go to Layout option → Result layout, you can control the display text information exactly:

Step 3: Configure what the search box looks like

One of the ways that the plugin works is by replacing the theme's search box with its own design, so you need to make sure that the plugin's search box design matches your current theme.

See more: How to create a multilingual WordPress website using WPML

To control that, go to Layout Options and use themes to change the look of your search box.

You can also manually change the color down the page if needed.

Step 4: Add your search box (or replace your topic search box)

Ok - now you are ready to really add WordPress autocomplete functionality to your website.?

To do that, the plugin gives you three options:

Replace topic search - with this option, the plugin will override your theme search function. For example, if you choose to use this feature, the plugin will replace the regular WordPress Search utility with its own search box and functionality.

Shortcode - you can place the shortcode wherever you want your search form to appear (you can use shortcode in pages, posts, sidebar widgets, etc.)

PHP function - if you are comfortable editing your topic code, you can use subtopics to add a search function directly to the topic template file.

The plugin provides you with a shortcode and PHP functionality at the top of the page. And you can turn on search substitution settings in the General Options tab.

That's it! Your visitors will now be able to enjoy automatic WordPress search on your site.

Step 5: Further refine the way the plugin works (optional)

If you want to further refine everything, the plugin includes a number of settings that give you more control and exactly how your WordPress live search works.

These settings are optional - that is, your direct search will work even if you skip this section.

But if you want more control, here are some helpful ways to tweak things.