WPML Integration

This Extension requires a Pro license

Current version: 1.7.3

WPML is a long-standing and widely trusted WordPress plugin that adds multilingual support to websites. It makes it easy to build and manage multilingual sites, whether you’re running a simple blog or a large corporate website.

When the SearchWP WPML Extension is active, it automatically integrates with WPML’s language filtering system. Search results are limited based on the currently active language, ensuring that users only see content relevant to the language they are browsing. This applies to both standard search results and live (AJAX) search results.

In addition to language detection from the current page, SearchWP also supports filtering search results using the lang parameter in the URL. When this parameter is present, SearchWP will return results that match the specified language code.

Non-Translatable Posts

The SearchWP WPML extension includes built-in support for post types that do not have separate translations for each language. In these cases, posts can fall back to the default language instead of returning empty results.

To enable this behavior, you must allow language fallback in WPML’s settings:

1. Navigate to WPML → Settings in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Locate the Post Types Translation section.
3. Enable the option that allows posts in other languages to fall back to the default language when a translation is not available.

Once enabled, SearchWP will be able to return results for these post types even if a translation does not exist for the current language.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

No results showing for certain search terms in a language

On multilingual sites, SearchWP’s keyword stemming feature can sometimes produce unexpected results for specific languages. This occurs because the stemming algorithm doesn’t account for language-specific stemming rules when processing and matching search tokens. Different languages have unique grammatical structures and word formation patterns that may not be properly handled by the general stemming algorithm.

To resolve search issues related to stemming, try disabling the keyword stemming option in your SearchWP engine settings. Disabling stemming for problematic languages often resolves issues where valid search terms fail to return expected results.

If disabling stemming does not resolve the issue, we recommend opening a support ticket so our team can investigate further.

AJAX filtering and language detection

When using SearchWP live search or AJAX-based filtering alongside site caching, WPML may not always detect the correct language for AJAX requests. This can result in search results being returned in the wrong language or not appearing at all.

To fix this, WPML provides an option to store the active language in a cookie for AJAX requests:

1. In your WordPress admin dashboard, go to WPML → Languages.
2. Scroll down to the Language filtering for AJAX operations section.
3. Enable the option “Store a language cookie to support language filtering for AJAX.”
4. Click Save to apply the changes.

Enabling this option ensures that WPML correctly identifies the current language during AJAX requests, even for non-logged-in users and cached pages. This allows SearchWP to return accurate, language-specific results during live search and filtering operations.