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Free Plugin by Christoph Vielgrader v4.28.2

Relevanssi

Relevanssi replaces the default search with a partial-match search that sorts results by relevance. It also indexes comments and shortcode content.

Relevanssi

The facts

Rating
4.8★ from 405
Active installs
100k+
Price
Free
Last updated
17 Aug 2026
Added
Jun 2009
Requires WP
4.9
Tested up to
WP 7.1
Requires PHP
7.1
Downloads
8,216,204

Our analysis

AI-assisted

Relevanssi is a WordPress plugin that enhances the standard search functionality by providing a more advanced search engine. It offers features such as relevance-based sorting of results, fuzzy matching, and the ability to search within comments, tags, and custom fields. This plugin is suitable for users looking to improve the search experience on their WordPress sites.

The plugin allows for a high degree of customisation, including the ability to create custom excerpts and highlight search terms in results. It is designed for multisite installations and is compatible with various membership plugins, making it a versatile option for different types of websites.

Best for: Websites that need improved search functionality and customisation options.

What it does well

  • Replaces standard WordPress search with a better search engine
  • Search results sorted by relevance, not date
  • Supports fuzzy matching and phrase searching
  • Multisite and bbPress friendly
  • Customisable search options and logging features

Where it falls short

  • May require large amounts of database space
  • Not recommended for hosting setups with limited database space

Verdict

Relevanssi offers a significant upgrade to the default WordPress search, making it a useful tool for enhancing user experience. However, consider your database space before installation.

From the developer

Christoph Vielgrader's own description of Relevanssi, lightly tidied.

Relevanssi replaces the standard WordPress search with a better search engine, with lots of features and configurable options. You’ll get better results, better presentation of results – your users will thank you.

This is the free version of Relevanssi. There’s also Relevanssi Premium, which has added features. For more information about Premium, see Relevanssi.com.

Do note that using Relevanssi may require large amounts (hundreds of megabytes) of database space (for a reasonable estimate, multiply the size of your wp_posts database table by three). If your hosting setup has a limited amount of space for database tables, using Relevanssi may cause problems. In those cases use of Relevanssi cannot be recommended.

Key features

  • Search results sorted in the order of relevance, not by date.
  • Fuzzy matching: match partial words, if complete words don’t match.
  • Find documents matching either just one search term (OR query) or require all words to appear (AND query).
  • Search for phrases with quotes, for example “search phrase”.
  • Create custom excerpts that show where the hit was made, with the search terms highlighted.
  • Highlight search terms in the documents when user clicks through search results.
  • Search comments, tags, categories and custom fields.
  • Multisite friendly.
  • bbPress support.
  • Gutenberg friendly.

Advanced features

  • Adjust the weighting for titles, tags and comments.
  • Log queries, show most popular queries and recent queries with no hits.
  • Restrict searches to categories and tags using a hidden variable or plugin settings.
  • Index custom post types and custom taxonomies.
  • Index the contents of shortcodes.
  • Google-style “Did you mean?” suggestions based on successful user searches.
  • Support for WPML multi-language plugin and Polylang.
  • Support for s2member membership plugin, Members, Groups, Simple Membership and other membership plugins.
  • Advanced filtering to help hacking the search results the way you want.
  • Search result throttling to improve performance on large databases.
  • Disable indexing of post content and post titles with a simple filter hook.

Premium features (only in Relevanssi Premium)

  • Indexing attachment content (PDF, Office, Open Office).
  • Improved spelling correction in “Did you mean?” suggestions.
  • Searching across multiple sites in the same multisite installation.
  • Search and index user profiles.
  • Search and index taxonomy term pages (categories, tags, custom taxonomies).
  • Search and index arbitrary columns in wp_posts MySQL table.
  • Assign weights to any post types and taxonomies.
  • Assign extra weight to new posts.
  • Let the user choose between AND and OR searches, use + and – operator (AND and NOT).
  • Export and import settings.
  • WP CLI commands.
  • Related posts.
  • Redirects for searches.

Thanks

  • Cristian Damm for tag indexing, comment indexing, post/page exclusion and general helpfulness.
  • Marcus Dalgren for UTF-8 fixing.
  • Warren Tape for 2.5.5 fixes.
  • Mohib Ebrahim for relentless bug hunting.
  • John Calahan for extensive 4.0 beta testing.

Read the full description on the official page →

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