SearchWP ($99/year) gives you complete control over what your WordPress search indexes, how it weights different content sources, and the ability to create multiple distinct search experiences on the same site. Where Relevanssi improves the single WordPress search, SearchWP lets you build entirely different search engines for different purposes – a product search with different weights than a blog search, a documentation search that includes PDF content.
The Search Engine Concept
SearchWP’s core concept is the Search Engine – a named configuration that defines what gets searched and how results are ranked. You can create multiple Search Engines and use different ones in different parts of your site. The Default Engine handles the main WordPress search (the ?s= URL parameter). Additional engines can be used in custom search forms with a shortcode parameter specifying which engine to use.
A documentation site might have: Default Engine for general site search (posts, pages), a Documentation Engine for the docs section with higher weights for document titles, and a FAQ Engine for a specific FAQ section. Each can be tuned independently.
Step 1: Install and Configure the Default Engine
Install SearchWP from searchWP.com after purchasing. Activate and go to SearchWP -> Settings -> Engines. The Default Engine is pre-configured. Click “Edit” to expand its settings. You see a list of content Sources (post types) and for each source, a list of Attributes (fields) with weight sliders.
For a content site, configure the Default Engine’s Post source with weights like:
- Title: 10 (highest weight – title matches are most relevant)
- Content: 2
- Excerpt: 3
- Categories: 5 (category match is a strong relevance signal)
- Tags: 4
- Custom Fields: 2-6 depending on the field’s relevance importance
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Step 2: Add Custom Field Sources
In the Engine configuration, expand a post type Source and click “Add Attribute”. Select “Custom Field” and enter the meta key. For an ACF field named “event_location”, enter event_location as the meta key. Set an appropriate weight based on how important this field should be for search ranking.
SearchWP automatically detects custom field keys used in your database and suggests them in a dropdown. For fields with unique or identifying information (product SKU, event location, speaker name), use higher weights (5-8). For supplementary information, use lower weights (1-3).
Step 3: WooCommerce Integration
SearchWP’s WooCommerce integration is a separate free extension (searchWP WooCommerce Integration). Install it from SearchWP -> Extensions. After installation, WooCommerce-specific sources appear in your Engine configuration:
- Product SKU – weight highly (customers searching by exact SKU expect that product first)
- Product attributes (colour, size, material) – searchable attributes from WooCommerce’s attribute system
- Product variation data
- Short and long descriptions separately adjustable
With this integration, searching for a SKU or a product attribute value returns the correct product even when the main product title or description does not contain that term.
Step 4: PDF and File Content Search
SearchWP can index the text content of PDF files uploaded to your Media Library. Go to SearchWP -> Settings -> Engines and add the PDF source to your engine. SearchWP uses a PHP PDF parser to extract text from uploaded PDFs and includes it in the search index.
This is particularly valuable for knowledge bases, legal or compliance sites, and documentation portals where important content is in downloadable PDFs rather than post body text. A visitor searching for a specific term finds both posts that mention it and PDFs that contain it, with a single search.