At the beginning of September I wrote an article about the Search Reloaded plugin, which sorts the WordPress search results by relevance rather than date. In addition to Search Reloaded, I also use the Search Excerpt plugin to enhance the search results on this site.
Generally search results pages use WordPress excerpts. Excerpts contain the first couple of sentences of a post. The problem with this as related to search is that the first couple of sentences may have nothing to do with the search term.
The Search Excerpt plugin corrects this problem by providing an excerpt that contains the term searched for, even it if it is from the last sentence of the article. You can test this by searching here on the keyword “reflect”. The search results will show the parts of the article that contains that keyword.
As with Search Reloaded, I recommend searching your blog before and after installing the plugin so you can see the difference in the search excerpts.
If the plugin is not working for you after activating it, make sure that your search results template contains the_excerpt() rather than the_content().
Do you think this enhances WordPress search results? Is this a plugin that you would install? Do you even search WordPress sites?
photo credit: ben patio
I wonder if it’s possible to mash up this plugin with Google Adsense for Search (without breaking the Adsense T&Cs, of course)
David Bradley’s last blog post – Explosive News
Thanks for the tip! I’ve never been pleased with WordPress’ search, and I will try out both these plugins. Where did you learn about the Search Excerpt plugin?
Mike Nichols’s last blog post – Suicide and Anxiety Disorders: What Is the Risk?
Hi David – Darn, you always make me think about things that I hadn’t considered. Would the two even work together?
I’ve tested the google adsense search but have not made a decision about it so have continued to try to improve the WordPress one.
Hi Mike – Yoast is a great site for information like this (oh no, now I’ve given away my source of article ideas). http://yoast.com/ It is possible that I found out about it from somewhere else but it was prob. Yoast.
I am seaching for some idea to write in my blog… somehow come to your blog. best of luck. Eugene
Hi Eugene – Thanks for visiting and commenting. I hope you found some good ideas. :-)
Hi, Thanks for this article. I just downloaded the search excerpt plugin – it is very useful. I see that you also use this plugin. Could you please share with me as how do you show the picture also in the search results?
What extra coding that I need to add to show the picture along with each post? I see that the post that has the picture, you showing it in a smaller scale and the actual post contains it in a little bigger scale.
Please let me know and thanks again for the article – very helpful.
Thanks, JK
JK – That is done with another plugin called Thumbnails for Excerpts. My article, which includes the download link for the plugin, is available here.
http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/wordpress-how-to-improve-the-archives-with-the-thumbnails-for-excerpts-plugin/
Thanks for visiting and for commenting! I hope the plugins are helpful.
Thanks so much Kim for a rapid response.
I just downloaded and it works like a charm.
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Hi JK – You’re welcome. I just did a search on your site and it looks great. And now I have a new site to check out too – looks like you have some wonderful recipes. :-)
Hi, thanks for the informative post. On previous themes I managed to make full use of the search exerpt plugin but for my current theme I cannot get it to work for the life of me.
Do you have any idea why this could be?
Hi Jackie – Does your search results template contain the_excerpt or the_content? It needs to be excerpt.