View plugin news, catch up on recent releases, and find out what's coming to SearchWP!
SearchWP’s Metrics Extension has been updated to version 1.0.9 and is a recommended update for all Metrics users. Here is the full changelog:
hits_min, hits_max when retrieving popular search queries over timeSearchWP version 3.0.6 has been made available to all active license holders. It is primarily a bugfix release with a couple of enhancements and is a recommended update for all license holders.
The biggest change in this version is an adjustment to how admin search interception is implemented. In order to take advantage of SearchWP’s index optimizations, you now need to specify which SearchWP engine is used when searching in the Admin/Dashboard.
There are additional optimizations and bugfixes that make SearchWP 3.0.6 more performant and display more relevant results in more cases.
searchwp_apply_rules_to_whitelisted_terms controls whether rules (min word length, stopword removal) applies to whitelisted termsA new Extension has been released: Custom Results Order! This extension was designed and built to help you manually curate results generated by SearchWP.
If SearchWP was originally built to return the most relevant results, why is this Extension necessary at all?
SearchWP does return the most relevant results it can find, but those results are directly tied to SearchWP’s algorithm used to find those results in the first place. As with all algorithms, there are edge cases that go against the norm, and finding search results is no different.
You are the most knowledgeable of your site content, and you know what your visitors are looking for. Using SearchWP’s Metrics you can gain insight not only into what your visitors are searching for, but also which results they’re clicking.
There will be times that visitors are clicking results that don’t rank highest in the results set. You could manually edit the engine configuration to compensate, or stuff some keywords in your content, or even create a ‘hidden’ Custom Field to stuff keywords to get the overall rank higher.
Those solutions can work, but Custom Results Order removes the burden of having to set up and manage some sort of undocumented system. It provides you with a single screen containing all of these customizations you have in place.
I hope Custom Results Order helps you improve your on-site search to an even higher degree. It’s already in use on this site, making sure that customers can find the documentation they’re looking for!
Version 3.0.5 of SearchWP has been released and is a suggested update for all active license holders. There are a couple of enhancements and changes that should be discussed:
You can now paste in a comma separated list of Stopwords into the Stopword input and SearchWP will automatically create separate Stopwords for you. This will help when you’d like to import a list of Stopwords directly into the interface.
Partial matching has been changed slightly in version 3.0.5. In version 3.0 partial matching was implemented in such a way that it only applied when exact matches were not found. This went against the implementation of LIKE Terms and Fuzzy Matches (the Extensions that SearchWP absorbed in version 3.0) so this behavior has been reversed. When partial matching is enabled SearchWP will now search for partial matches regardless if there are exact matches. You can utilize the searchwp_partial_matches_lenient filter to restore the behavior from version 3.0 if you’d like.
The third party libraries used by SearchWP have been reorganized and updates. There are two reasons for this: primarily there was a security notice related to TCPDF which is a library used by SearchWP for PDF parsing/indexing. This security issue was not exploitable given SearchWP’s implementation as it relied on a malicious actor uploading a specific file type which needed to then be used in the creation of a PDF using TCPDF. SearchWP does not generate PDFs nor does it facilitate file uploads. While this exploit does not directly relate to SearchWP it is important to remain updated. The second reason for reorganizing these dependencies is an effort to circumvent an issue with plugin updates in certain Windows server environments.
The full changelog for version 3.0.5 is as follows:
SearchWP 3.0.4 is a bug fix and small improvement release that is a suggested update for all active license holders. Full changelog:
searchwp_indexed_post_typessearchwp_lenient_accents now applies during searches as wellsearchwp_lenient_accents_on_search to allow refined control over leinient accent treatmentVersion 3.0.2 of SearchWP has been made available to all active license holders. This release fixes a couple of bugs/regressions introduced in version 3.0. Full changelog:
searchwp_short_circuit being incorrectly overriddenVersion 3.0.1 of SearchWP is now available which includes a small fix as outlined in the changelog:
SearchWP version 3.0 has been made available to all active license holders. There are a few big changes in this release that you should be aware of:
SWP_QueryHere’s a quick (3 minute video) going over a few of the UI updates, followed by a more detailed breakdown of what’s new/changed in version 3.0!
The Advanced tab of the SearchWP settings screen has been rebuilt and modernized in many ways, take a look!
The entire interface was re-thought from the ground up based on common use cases. The goal was to modernize the interface based on lessons learned from rebuilding the engine configuration interface in version 2.9.
One of the biggest changes made to the Advanced settings screen is the inclusion of Stopword management. Stopwords are an important part of any search engine setup, and SearchWP 3.0 makes it much easier for you to manage your Stopwords. Prior to version 3.0 the only way to customize this list was through a hook, but now:
Beyond implementing a localized list of default stopwords, SearchWP 3.0 will suggest additional stopwords based on the content of your site.
This will help to further optimize your index resulting in faster searches with more relevant results!
SearchWP’s Extensions have been a big contributor to its adoption. Certain Extensions were built as future features by design, and the time has come to directly integrate some of the most popular Extensions directly into SearchWP itself. The following Extensions have been deprecated in favor of their core counterparts:
Term Synonyms have been directly integrated into the Advanced settings screen, and the UI has been improved in a number of ways as well:
Synonym management in SearchWP
Term Highlight has been integrated as a Setting that can be enabled with a single tick of a checkbox, managing ignored terms has been moved directly into the Stats screen (more on that in a bit), and partial matches has been improved in a number of ways as well.
Prior to SearchWP 3.0 there were two Extensions to help with partial matches; LIKE Terms and Fuzzy Matches. They both did different things, but at first glance it was very confusing as to why you’d use one over the other, or both for that matter. Partial matches have been directly integrated into SearchWP 3.0, and the details of the implementation have been made available in the documentation for that feature.
Search statistics have always been an important part of the data provided by SearchWP to site owners. Being able to monitor what your visitors are actively searching for can be a big help in determining what content changes to make on your site. The existing stats screen hadn’t changed much since version 1.0 and with the need to integrate management of ignored terms and the ability to reset the statistics it was time to rebuild and modernize it.
The charting library has been updated and UI rebuilt in a more modern way which will make stats review a much more pleasant experience going forward. If you’re looking to get more out of your search stats, be sure to check out the Metrics extension!
SearchWP has always considered custom fields to be first party content, and many SearchWP users are big fans of Advanced Custom Fields. The documentation for SearchWP mentions ACF a lot, and as of SearchWP 3.0 the Custom Fields dropdown will now automatically support “repeatable” fields by utilizing SearchWP’s ability to partially match meta keys:
Adding a repeatable entry will include all sub-fields of that repeatable ACF field, saving you the trouble of adding individual sub-fields. This functionality has been supported by SearchWP but prior to 3.0 you needed to use your own hooks to explicitly add support for partial meta key matches.
SearchWP 3.0 will also remove ACF reference fields (the fields with the same meta key but prefixed with an underscore) to clean things up for you.
By default SearchWP 3.0 will parse content that has been input using blocks (a.k.a. Gutenberg) as introduced in WordPress 5.0. For the time being there is no way to give individual blocks specific weights, all of the content generated from parsing the block will be index as it was entered into the main post content.
If you would prefer that SearchWP not parse your blocks, you can add this hook to a custom plugin or your theme’s functions.php:
| <?php | |
| add_filter( 'searchwp_do_blocks', '__return_false' ); |
If you feel that giving control over individual blocks would be useful in an upcoming version of SearchWP please send over your input!
SWP_QueryThe goal of SWP_Query was to mimic WP_Query so as to save you trouble when migrating from a traditional WordPress Loop for search results.
As of SearchWP version 3.0, SWP_Query now supports a more traditional Loop like so:
| <?php | |
| $swp_query = new SWP_Query( array( 's' => 'coffee' ) ); | |
| if ( $swp_query->have_posts() ) { | |
| while ( $swp_query->have_posts() ) { | |
| $swp_query->the_post(); | |
| get_template_part( 'content', 'search' ); | |
| } | |
| } else { | |
| echo '<p>No results found!</p>'; | |
| } |
These new methods should make it easier for everyone to take advantage of what SWP_Query has to offer!
There were a number of bug fixes and performance optimizations rolled into SearchWP 3.0 as well, here’s the full changelog:
searchwp_legacy_advanced_settings filter controls whether the legacy Advanced Settings screen is usedCS, DA, DE, EN, ES, FI, GA, IT, NL, PL, PT, RO, RU, SV, TRsearchwp_do_shortcodes)SWP_Query now has the following methods: have_posts, rewind_posts, the_post, next_post allowing for a more traditional Loopsearchwp_statistics_popular_days_{$days} filter allows overriding of popular search queriessearchwp_legacy_stats filter controls whether the legacy Advanced Settings screen is usedsearchwp_results_found_posts filter allows modification of SearchWP’s found postssearchwp_results_max_num_pages filter allows modification of SearchWP’s maximum number of pagesSearchWP_License classsearchwp_index_emoji filterVersion 2.9.17 of SearchWP includes a fix for delta updates that in some cases caused extensive resource usage, it is a recommended update for all active license holders.
Full changelog:
Version 2.9.16 of SearchWP is now available for all active license holders. In this release SWP_Query received a few updates and a number of fixes have been put in place.
Full changelog:
searchwp_background_deltassearchwp_search_query_orderpost_status parameter to SWP_Queryorder parameter to SWP_Queryorderby parameter to SWP_QueryNow you can utilize all of the content that's gone unrecognized by native WordPress search instantly with SearchWP