Thursday, October 22, 2020

How to Automatically Translate WordPress (Easy Method)

Do you want to automatically translate your WordPress site into other languages?

There are few different ways to translate your WordPress site: you can manual translations yourself, hire translators, or use AI powered translation tools which have gotten quite good over the years.

In this article, we’ll show you how to automatically translate WordPress using machine learning (the easy method).

Automatically translating WordPress the easy way

Why Automatically Translate Your WordPress Site?

Automatically translating your WordPress site lets you easily provide content in your users’ own languages.

Whereas translating your site manually takes a lot of time. You can make a multilingual WordPress website and pay translators to help with translations, but your costs will increase as you add more languages or hire more translators.

Automatically translating your site is quick and affordable. You could just translate a few important pages, or you could translate your whole site.

The translation quality may not be as good as manual translations. However, AI-powered tools have become much better and can provide a quicker and cost-effective alternative.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily set automatic translation on a WordPress site.

Setting Up the WPML Plugin

The easiest way to automatically translate WordPress is to use a translation plugin. We recommend WPML for this.

WPML is a premium plugin and you need their ‘Multilingual CMS’ plan or higher to run automatic translations.

First, you need to install and activate the WPML plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, click the ‘Register Now’ link that you will see on your plugins page. You will then see a page where you need to enter your site key. You can find this under your account on WPML website.

Entering the site key for WPML

Now, go to the WPML » Languages page in your WordPress admin. This will show the WPML setup options.

First, simply select the language for your current content, then click the Next button.

Selecting your content language

Now, you need to choose the languages to enable for your site. Just check the box next to the ones that you want to use.

Selecting your translation language(s)

The language options on your site will appear in a language switcher.

WPML will prompt you to choose an order for the languages in the switcher. You also need to choose what to do if a translation is missing for a specific page.

Choosing the order of languages for the language switcher

Below this, you can go ahead and add the language switcher to your navigation menu. If you prefer, you can add it to a widget or the footer area of your website.

Finally, you have the option to link to translations either above or below your posts. If you enable this option, you can choose how these translation links will look. You will also see a preview:

Setting up the translation links for your posts

When you’re ready, click the Next button to move on.

WPML will then ask you whether you want to send themes and plugin information to WPML.org. This can help speed things up if you need support.

Enabling compatibility reporting for WPML

Then, you need to enter your site key if you didn’t do so before. If you’ve already entered it, simply click the Next button.

After that, you will see some recommendations for other components to install. Go ahead and install and activate the String Translation and Translation Management addons at this step:

Viewing the setup recommendations

Finally, click the ‘Skip and Finish’ link in order to close the setup wizard.

Translating Your Content Automatically

To translate your content, you need to go to the WPML » Translation Management page in your WordPress admin.

Here, you need to choose who will translate your site. We recommend choosing ‘Only myself’ here:

Choosing who will translate your content

Next, you will see some details about the Advanced Translation Editor. Simply click to continue. You will then see a Summary, where you just need to go ahead and click the ‘Done!’ button.

After that, you will be taken to your translation management dashboard.

Here, you need to click on the ‘Translation Tools’ tab then the ‘Sign up for free’ button to set up automatic translations:

Signing up for automatic translations

Tip: You get 2,000 words/month of machine translation for free.

You will then be prompted to enter your billing details.

After that, click on the ‘Translation Dashboard’ tab. From here, you can select the content that you want to translate. We’re going to translate our About and Contact pages.

Simply check the boxes next to your chosen pages:

Viewing the list of pages in the translation dashboard

Once you select the content, you will see a word count estimate. This helps you budget for the automatic translations.

Next, scroll down to the ‘Select translation options’ section. This will default to creating translations of your chosen content in all languages, but you can change the settings if you want.

After making your selection, click on the ‘Add selected content to translation basket’ button.

Clicking the button to add your selected content to your translation basket

You should now see a new ‘Translation Basket’ tab at the top of the screen. Clicking on it will show you the pages that are ready for translation and total number of words that will be needed.

Go ahead and click the ‘Send all items for translation’ button:

Send your content for translation

You should then see a success message.

Next, go to the WPML » Translations page in your WordPress admin to see your translations queue.

To use the automatic translater, just click the ‘Take and translate’ button next to a version of a page.

The translations queue for WPML

You will then see the advanced translation editor. Here, you just need to click the ‘Yes, translate automatically’ button:

Click to automatically translate your content

WPML will now automatically translate your content into the chosen language using machine learning.

The completed Spanish translation of our content

Simply click the ‘Complete’ button at the bottom of the screen and you can then translate your other pages in the same way.

Viewing Your Translated Pages on Your Website

You can visit a page on your website and view the translated versions. Here’s how our About page now looks on our demo website:

The About page on our demo site, with translation language options shown

If we click the link for the French version, we see the translated page.

The About page, translated into French

Automatically Translating WordPress Content in Bulk

If you have a lot of content to translate, it’s quickest to do it as a batch. As before, you first need to add the content to your Translation Basket then send it for translation.

After that, go to the Translation Tools tab. Here, you will see the list of translation jobs. Click the checkbox at the top of the list to select them all:

Selecting your content for bulk automatic translation

Only 10 items fit on each page. You need to select any jobs on any subsequent pages too. Simply click the ‘2’ button to the bottom right of the table to do so.

Once you’ve selected all the jobs, click the ‘Translate automatically’ button:

Click the button to run the automatic bulk translator

They will be automatically translated for you. You can view the completed versions by viewing your site as before.

If you want to edit an automatic translation, simply go to Pages » All Pages in your WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the pencil icon for that language:

Editing one of the translations

This will then launch the Advanced Translation Editor.

The Advanced Translation Editor for WPML

To learn more about WPML, check out our article on creating a multilingual site.

Changing the Language of Your WordPress Admin

WPML also lets different users select different languages within the WordPress admin area.

it’s easy to do this by going to Users » Profile and selecting your preferred language from the Language dropdown:

Setting your WordPress admin language

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.

Now, your admin area will then be translated into your chosen language:

The WordPress admin area shown in French

We hope this article helped you learn how to automatically translate WordPress. You may also like our article on the best translation plugins for WordPress, and our comparison of best online business phone services for virtual teams.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Automatically Translate WordPress (Easy Method) appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 22, 2020 at 05:00PM

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Welcome PushEngage to the WPBeginner Family of Products

Today, I’m extremely excited to share that PushEngage has joined Awesome Motive, and it is now part of the WPBeginner family of products.

PushEngage is a leading push notification software with over 10,000+ customers in 150+ countries who use the platform to reliably send over 9 billion notifications each month.

Welcome PushEngage to WPBeginner Family of Products

PushEngage & Push Notification Overview

PushEngage is a popular web push notification software for publishers and store owners. It helps you increase your website traffic, boost user engagement, and increase overall revenue.

Basically you can use it to send targeted personalized messages to users and bring them back to your website.

This can include new blog post notifications, product announcements, abandoned cart reminders, and more.

Push notifications go directly to the user’s web browser or mobile device which means it has a much higher engagement rate.

Web Push Notifications on Both Mobile and Desktop

For more details, see our guide on how to add push notifications to WordPress.

I first started using push notifications over 3 years ago and quickly realized that the click rate, engagement, and opt-in rate is significantly higher than my email newsletter or any other engagement channel.

Today our push subscriber list is larger than our email newsletter list, and push notifications consistently make the top 5 traffic sources on WPBeginner.

After seeing these results, I had all our companies start implementing push notifications, and they too have seen amazing success.

To make it easy for WPBeginner users to get started, we’re offering a forever free plan on PushEngage.

Grow Your Traffic with PushEngage for Free »

Background Story – Why PushEngage?

If you’ve been reading WPBeginner for a while, then you know that I’m obsessed with optimization.

Once I find something that works, then I want to improve it to get even better results.

This is a lot harder to do when you have no influence on the development team that’s building the actual software.

While some push notification software have developer APIs, they’re often unreliable and aren’t flexible enough to do the level of customization that I want for our businesses.

Furthermore, almost all of them have a really terrible integration with WordPress.

Since we use WordPress on all our sites, I needed a deeply integrated solution that can do automatic subscriber segmentation based on blog categories, seamless integration with our various eCommerce platforms for cart abandonment reminders, and an easy setup wizard that our team can use to add push notifications our new brands.

Since no other software had 100% of what I wanted, we started building an internal solution beginning of July.

Then 3 weeks later, completely randomly, I got an email from a friend, Andrew, who told me that I should chat with Ravi from PushEngage about a potential acquisition.

I was first introduced to Ravi by another friend, Harsh Agrawal, from ShoutMeLoud in 2017. That was when I first started using push notifications. I tried to invest in PushEngage but the timing wasn’t right.

But as soon as Ravi and I started chatting again, we knew that this was the right time for both of us.

Ravi has built an amazing team and a reputable brand at PushEngage. We share a similar vision and commitment to helping customers succeed online.

We talked and quickly came to an agreement where the entire PushEngage team would join Awesome Motive, so we can build the most user friendly push notification solution for WordPress and beyond.

I’m super excited about this acquisition and am looking forward to sharing our product development & business growth playbooks with the PushEngage team to bring more amazing features to the WordPress community (even faster, since we don’t have to build from scratch anymore).

What’s Coming Next?

Our work is just starting.

We will be leveraging the scale and knowledge of the Awesome Motive team to build more innovative solutions to help you maximize the full power of push notifications.

As part of this, we’ll build deeper integration with other Awesome Motive products, and popular platforms like WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, MemberPress, and others.

In the coming months, you can expect to see easier workflows to set up highly personalized push notifications campaigns that’s proven to drive results, improved opt-in technology that’ll help you get even more subscribers, and introduction of new message channels that you can use to expand your reach.

We have a lot to cover, but we’re up for the challenge. We have an exciting 12-month roadmap, and I know you’re going to love it.

If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the PushEngage platform, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.

In the meantime, I highly recommend you to take advantage of our free plan on PushEngage to start building your push subscribers list, so you can grow your traffic and revenue.

As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner. We look forward to bringing you more amazing solutions to help you grow your business.

Yours Truly,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

The post Welcome PushEngage to the WPBeginner Family of Products appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 21, 2020 at 03:31PM

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

How to Track Website Visitors to Your WordPress Site

Are you looking for an easy way to track your website visitors in WordPress? Tracking the number of website visitors on your site can help you get insights to grow your business.

You can better understand your audience, look at which posts they like, where they come from, and how they use your website.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily track website visitors on your WordPress site (step by step).

how to track website visitors in wordpress

Why You Need to Track Your Website Visitors

Tracking website traffic is one of the most important indicators of your website’s performance. More visitors means more opportunities for converting them into subscribers and customers.

It also unlocks promising insights that you may have missed.

For example, you can find out which country or city your visitors are from. This can help you deliver personalized content or figure out which languages you should translate your website in.

You can see which blog post is getting a lot of traffic and then try to come up with similar topics to help your users.

Another benefit of tracking your website visitors is that you can uncover which source they used to find your website.

For instance, did the users perform a search on Google and then landed on your webpage, or maybe they found your brand mentioned link on another site or platform.

This way you can focus your marketing efforts and investment on channels that work. That said, let’s take a look at how to set up website visitor tracking in Google Analytics.

Setting up Google Analytics to Track Website Visitors

Google Analytics is the most powerful website visitor tracking software on the market. It allows you to see how many visitors you are getting and what they do while visiting your website.

First, you need to sign up for a Google Analytics account. You can use any Google or Gmail account to sign up.

Google Analytics sign up

Next, you will be asked to provide an account name.

Enter account name

After that, Google Analytics will ask to choose a platform. You need to select the web here.

website visitor tracking in wordpress

Next, you need to provide your website name, URL, country, and time zone.

Google Analytics account settings

After that, click on the Create button to continue.

Finally, you will be presented with the Google Analytics tracking code to copy and paste into your website.

There are several different ways to install Google Analytics on your WordPress site.

However, the easiest way is through MonsterInsights. It’s the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. You can use it to connect Google Analytics with your site without the need to edit code.

First, you need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: the free version of MonsterInsights plugin is a great place to start for beginners.

Upon activation, you will be taken to a welcome screen and you will also see a new menu item labeled ‘Insights’ in your admin area.

On the welcome screen, click the button that says ‘Launch the Wizard!’.

launch MonsterInsights setup wizard

Next, you will have to select a category that best describes your website. You can choose from a business website, publisher (blog), or eCommerce. After selecting a category, click the ‘Save and Continue’ button.

Select Website Category on MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights will now ask you to enter the license key. You can find the key in the MonsterInsights account area under the Downloads tab. Copy the key and paste it in the wizard. MonsterInsights will then verify the key.

You will then have to connect your Google Analytics account. To do that, click on the ‘Connect MonsterInsights’ button.

Enter License Key

Now, select a Google account or sign in to one which you used when signing up for Google Analytics.

select google account

On the next screen, you will be asked to give MonsterInsights access to your Google Account. Click the ‘Allow’ button at the bottom to continue.

allow monsterinsights to access google account

Now select the website you want to track from the dropdown menu. Once you have done that, click the ‘Complete Connection’ button to continue.

Select Your Website

MonsterInsights will now connect your website with Google Analytics. To finish up the setup process, the plugin will ask you to select some recommended settings.

You can specify the file formats you want to track, set up affiliate link tracking, check who can see the reports, and enable options to receive automatic updates. After configuring the settings, click the ‘Save and continue’ button.

Recommended Settings in MonsterInsights

On the next screen, you will be asked to install some addons. You can skip this step for now and click the ‘Save and continue’ button.

Recommended Addons

In the final step, the wizard will tell you that you are all set to use MonsterInsights. Click on ‘Finish Setup & Exit Wizard’.

Finish Setup

You are now ready to use MonsterInsights and view your website traffic reports inside your WordPress dashboard.

Viewing Website Visitor Reports in WordPress

To view your website visitors, you can use different MonsterInsights reports. They help you save time, as you don’t have to navigate through Google Analytics and try to find data that matters for your business.

Note: Dashboard reports will vary based on the MonsterInsights plan you use.

Let’s look at each report and how you can use it to track website visitors.

Overview Report

To start, go to the Insights » Reports page from your WordPress admin area. Here, the first report you will see will be the Overview report.

You can select the date range and then see the total number of sessions and pageviews for your website along with the average session duration and bounce rate.

The report also shows you which device your visitors use to visit your site. This can help you optimize your website for different devices and make sure you have a responsive WordPress theme.

It also gives you a breakdown of new and returning visitors.

MonsterInsights Overview Report

If you scroll down, you will see more reports that will help you see where your visitors are coming from.

The Top Countries report shows the region where most of your traffic is from. You can use this data to come up with different strategies based on geolocation.

Next, is the Top Referrals report, which shows the websites that are sending traffic to your site. Using this information, you can create partnerships, find guest post opportunities, or find similar websites to promote your posts and products.

Top Countries and Top Referrals Report

The last report you can view under Overview is the Top Posts/Pages. These are landing pages and blog posts that attract the most website visitors.

Top Posts and Pages

Publishers Report

Next, you can click on the Publishers option from the top menu and get more insights about your visitors.

The report shows you more stats about your popular landing pages along with the number of visits they get, the average duration, and the bounce rate.

You can use this information to come up with more content topics and increase your web traffic.

It also tells you which outbound links and affiliate links are getting the most clicks. If you offer downloadable content, then you can also track which file type gets the most downloads.

Another important report you can view for tracking your website visitors is by looking at the demographics. MonsterInsights shows the age and gender of your visitors.

You can do a lot of things with this information. For example, it can help you set the right audience for retargeting ads in Facebook. Another way of using the data is by creating content for specific age groups and gender.

Age and Gender of Website Visitors in WordPress

Search Console Report

MonstrInsights can help you find out which search terms people enter in Google to find your website through its Search Console report.

The report displays data about the Top 50 Google Search Terms along with their number of clicks, impressions, CTR (click-through-rate), and average position.

Search Console Report

You can boost your website traffic by optimizing your website for similar keywords and improve the rankings of search terms that are not in the top 10 search results on Google.

Do check out our guide on how to add WordPress site to Google Search Console.

Ecommerce Report

If you have an online store (eCommerce), then MonsterInsights can help you track its performance. The enhanced eCommerce report gives you an overview of the conversion rate, number of transactions, revenue, and average order value of your online store.

It even shows the most popular products that generate a lot of sales. However, to track your website visitors, you can scroll to the Top Conversion Sources report.

These are referral websites that send highly converting traffic to your site. You can invest in promoting your store and products to such websites in order to boost traffic and sales.

Top Conversion Sources

For more details, see our guide on how to WordPress conversion tracking guide.

Dimensions Report

MonsterInsights allows you to track additional information about your visitors by using custom dimensions. These reports are not available by default in Google Analytics and allow you to track custom interactions on your website.

For instance, you can set up tracking popular categories, tags, post types, authors, focus keywords, and more. It helps you see what your visitors like on your website.

custom dimensions report monsterinsights

Real-Time Report

The last report you can view in WordPress for tracking your website visitors is the real-time report.

It shows how many people are currently active on your site and shows you the real-time count of your traffic.

Real-time report MonsterInsights

In addition, you can also view the geographic location, top pages, and top referral traffic sources that are driving website visitors at any given time using the real-time report.

By using these reports, you can easily track your website visitors and create strategies to grow your business.

We hope this article helped you learn how to track your website visitors to your WordPress site. You may also want to take a look at our complete WordPress SEO guide and tips to get more traffic to your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Track Website Visitors to Your WordPress Site appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 20, 2020 at 05:00PM

Monday, October 19, 2020

How to Fix WordPress Updating Failed / Publishing Failed Error

Are you trying to fix the WordPress updating failed or publishing failed error on your website?

Sometimes when editing a post or page, you may see the updating failed or publishing failed error. This error does not give any clues, which makes it particularly difficult for beginners.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily fix the WordPress updating failed error. We’ll also explain what causes this issue, and how to avoid this in the future.

Fixing the updating failed or publishing failed error in WordPress post editor

What Causes Updating Failed or Publishing Failed Error in WordPress?

Failure to communicate with the WordPress REST API causes the ‘Updating Failed’ or ‘Publishing Failed’ error in WordPress.

Updating failr or Publishing failed error in WordPress post editor

Basically, WordPress sometimes uses a set of APIs (programming methods) called ‘REST API’ to send and receive requests to the WordPress database.

If it fails to send and receive those requests, then some parts of your WordPress website may not be able to function. This includes the WordPress block editor, which uses the API to send update and publish requests to WordPress.

Why WordPress is Unable to use REST API?

Now you might be wondering, that if I didn’t make any changes to my website, then why did the REST API stop working on its own?

There are a number of scenarios that may prevent WordPress from using the REST API. For example, you may not be connected to the internet or have lost connectivity.

Other reasons may be a little more complicated. For instance, you may have accidentally changed the site URL, a WordPress plugin may be causing the issue, or a third-party service may be blocking the API calls.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to troubleshoot and fix the WordPress updating failed error.

Step 1. Check Your Internet Connection and Site URL

The most common cause for updating failed error in WordPress is losing the WiFi connection. If your computer loses the internet connection as you are writing a blog post, then WordPress will fail to save your changes.

Make sure you are connected to the internet by visiting other websites in a new browser tab.

If your internet is working fine, then the next thing you would want to check is your WordPress site URL setting.

Simply go to Settings » General page and make sure that the Site Address and WordPress Address options are correct. For most websites, you should have the same URLs in both fields.

WordPress site URL setting

If your site URL settings look ok, and you are connected to the internet, then you can move on to further troubleshooting.

Step 2. Check REST API Status Using WordPress Site Health

WordPress comes with a built-in site health tool, which shows important information about your site’s security and performance.

Simply go to the Tools » Site Health page to view the report. If REST API is not working, then you will see it under recommended improvements as ‘The REST API encountered an unexpected result’.

REST API error in WordPress Site Health

It may also show you some debugging information which may explain what happened when WordPress made the REST API call. Studying this may give you some clue on which plugin or third party service may be causing the issue.

However, if it doesn’t give you any clue, then you can move on to the next step.

Step 3. Disable All Your WordPress Plugins

If a WordPress plugin is causing the REST API to misbehave, then the easiest way to find it out is by deactivating all your WordPress plugins.

You can go to the Plugins » Installed Plugins page and check the box to select all plugins. After that, use the Bulk Actions drop down to deactivate all plugins.

Deactivate all WordPress plugins

After that, you can go to the post edit screen and try to update. If the Updating Failed error disappears, then this means that one of your plugins was causing the issue.

You can now start activating your WordPress plugins one at a time and try to reproduce the error. Once you find the plugin causing the issue, you can seek support from plugin author or find an alternative plugin.

On the other hand, if disabling all WordPress plugins didn’t make the error go away, then continue to the next step.

Step 4. Check Website Firewall Service

If you are using a website firewall service like Sucuri or Cloudflare, then there is a chance that these services may block REST API requests.

This could happen if their firewall filters consider your IP address to be suspicious. They may also block REST API requests if your website is under an on going DDOS attack.

If you are using Cloudflare, then you can temporarily disable Cloudflare to see if this resolves your issue.

Normally, you’ll find Cloudflare settings under Domains section of your hosting dashboard. Bluehost users can find under My Sites » Manage » Performance tab.

Temporarily disable Cloudflare in Bluehost

If you are using Sucuri, then you can reach out to their support team, and they can whitelist your IP address or let you know what’s causing the issue.

Plugins and Firewall services are the most common cause of the updating failed error. However, if you are still seeing the error, then there are a few more things you can do.

Step 5. Enable and Review WordPress Debug Log

WordPress comes with built-in feature to keep a log of all WordPress errors. It does not log the REST API errors, but it will help you see if there are some other issues that may be causing the error.

Simply add the following lines to your wp-config.php file.

// Change WP_DEBUG to true

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );

// Keep a log of WordPress errors

define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );

Don’t forget to save your changes and upload the file back to your server. You can now try to publish or update a post in WordPress to reproduce the error.

After that, you can connect to your WordPress hosting account using an FTP client and go to /wp-content/ folder. From here, you can download the debug.log file to your computer.

Debug log file in WordPress

You can open the debug file in a plain text editor like Notepad. It may contain a few errors, warnings, or notices caught by WordPress as you worked on your site or a user visited it.

Debug log file showing PHP errors in WordPress

If you see something that points you to a plugin or theme file, then this can be a useful hint. You can then mention this error when asking for support on WordPress.org forums or from your hosting provider.

Step 6. Temporarily Switch to the Classic WordPress Editor

A temporary solution to this error is to enable the classic editor. It is the old WordPress editor that does not rely on REST API to update and publish content.

You can enable it by simply installing and activating the Classic Editor plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to enable the classic editor in WordPress.

Upon activation, you can simply edit the post you were working on. You would be able to save and publish it without seeing the updating failed or publishing failed error in WordPress.

Classic editor

Final Step: Ask for Support

If all else fails, then you may need to ask for support. You can start by directly contacting your hosting provider. They do have access to server logs and additional tools. It could also be caused by a misconfigured server or glitch at their end.

You can also seek help on WordPress.org forums or WPBeginner Facebook Group where other experts and users can help you fix the error.

For more details, see our article on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.

We hope this article helped you fix the WordPress updating failed or publishing failed error. You may also want to bookmark our complete guide on the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Fix WordPress Updating Failed / Publishing Failed Error appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 19, 2020 at 05:00PM

Friday, October 16, 2020

12 WordPress Search Plugins to Improve Your Site Search

Are you looking for the best WordPress search plugin to improve your site search?

We all know that the default WordPress search feature is quite limited. However, there are several WordPress search plugins that can help you improve the default search experience.

In this article, we will highlight the best WordPress search plugins to improve your site search.

Comparing the best WordPress search plugins

Why Use a WordPress Search Plugin?

WordPress comes with a built-in search feature, which is quite limited and not very good in finding the relevant content.

If you are making a new WordPress website or blog, then you may not need a better search feature right away.

However, as you add more content, you would want to help users easily find articles or products. A lot of folks rely mainly on SEO best practices, hoping that users will find things through search engines.

WPBeginner site search

Adding a site search helps users who are already on your website. For instance, they may be looking for an older article that they didn’t bookmark or a particular product on your WooCommerce store.

Site search helps users stay on your website, boosts engagement, and ultimately leads to higher conversions and sales.

The good news is that there are several WordPress search plugins that can help you do that. Some of these plugins are built for specific purposes like WooCommerce product search and some improve search experience across your website.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress search plugins that you can try.

1. SearchWP

SearchWP

SearchWP is one of the best custom search plugin for WordPress. It is very easy to use and the search results are relatively more accurate.

It allows searches for your keyword in post/page title, content, slug, categories, tags, taxonomies, excerpts, and even comments. You can control the algorithm by assigning weight to each content type from 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest.

Upon activation, the plugin automatically indexes your content and replaces the default search feature in WordPress. See our article on how to improve WordPress search with SearchWP for more detailed instructions.

Pricing: Starting from $99 per year.

2. ElasticPress

ElasticPress

ElasticPress is a hosted WordPress search service built on ElasticSearch.

Instead of running on your WordPress site, it runs the search queries on the cloud and shows results at a lightening speed. It is extremely easy to use and integrate on any WordPress site and works with all top WordPress hosting providers.

It has built-in Ajax search which shows instant results as users start typing. It also works well with WooCommerce and shows users the products they are looking for much quicker.

It is a hosted service and a lot more expensive than any other search solutions on this list.

Pricing: $79 per month

3. Ivory Search

Ivory Search

Ivory Search is another excellent WordPress search plugin to replace the default WordPress search.

It allows you to create multiple custom search forms. Each form can have its own custom search settings which allows you to create dynamic forms for different areas of your website.

It works with popular WordPress multilingual plugins and WooCommerce. To improve search results, Ivory Search looks into post types, images metadata, custom fields, and more.

You can also use Ajax to show live search results without reloading a page. It comes with shortcodes and a search widget allowing you to easily display search forms anywhere on your website.

Pricing: The base plugin is free. Premium version starts at $19.99 per year.

4. WP Google Search

WP Google Search

WP Google Search allows you to easily replace default WordPress search feature with Google Custom Search.

It is really simple to use, you’ll need to create a Google Custom Search for your site. After that, you can copy the search engien ID and paste it in plugin settings.

The plugin also comes with a widget which allows you to display Google Custom Search in your WordPress sidebar. You can also use a shortcode to display the search form.

Pricing: Free

5. SearchWP Ajax Live

SearchWP Ajax Live

SearchWP Ajax Live is an addon plugin for SearchWP but would work with any WordPress search form that uses the built-in WordPress template tags to display the search form.

It enhances your existing WordPress search with live Ajax search results as soon as user starts typing. This offers a better user experience and does not require a page reload.

The plugin also offers flexible customization option for advanced users. Allowing them to cutomize the results template and integrate Ajax functionality into any search form.

Pricing: Free

6. YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search

YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search

YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search is a great WooCommerce product search plugin that helps customers quickly find products on your store. It allows you to let customers search SKUs, search within specific product categories and filter the results without reloading a page.

YITH WooCommerce Ajax search is highly customizable. You can show thumbnails, badges, prices, and promotions in live search results. You can also add a search bar to different product categories or shop pages.

The plugin works with WooCommerce stores in any language and is fully compatible with multilingual stores.

Pricing: Starting from $69.99 per year.

7. Ajax Search for WooCommerce

Ajax Search for WooCommerce

Ajax Search for WooCommerce is another excellent WooCommerce search plugin. It allows you to instantly fetch search results using Ajax without reloading a page.

It comes with a powerful product SKU search, category and tags filters, and easy implementation in the navigation menu, sidebar, or shortcode.

You can easily add product search to any product category or shop page. The plugin also works on multilingual stores out of the box.

Pricing: Base plugin is free. Premium version starting at $49 per year with additional features.

8. WOOF Products Filter for WooCommerce

WOOF Products Filter for WooCommerce

WOOF Products Filter for WooCommerce is a very useful search companion for WooCommerce stores. It allows your customers to filter products using a number of options including categories, colors, size, and more.

You can use a shortcode in a sidebar widget to display the search and filtering options. You can also choose to use Ajax for sorting products without leaving the page.

It is easy to set up for beginners and offers tons of customization options for developers who may want to implement it into custom product templates.

Pricing: Free

9. Relevanssi

Relevanssi

Relevanssi is another popular WordPress search plugin that improves WordPress search by fetching more relevant results.

It can search for PDF contents, shortcode outputs, custom fields, user profiles, categories and tags, WooCommerce products, and more.

One thing that you need to look for is compatibility issues. Ralevanssi has compatibility issues with popular page builder plugins, BuddyPress, NextGen Gallery, and a few more.

Pricing: Base plugin is free. You can upgrade to the premium version for $99 per year.

10. WP Extended Search

WP Extended Search

WP Extended Search is a light weight and simple WordPress search plugin that allows you to easily extend the functionality of the default WordPress search.

You can simply go to the plugin settings and select the options that you want to include in the search. You can search in author name, taxonomies, post types, meta data, and more.

You don’t need to add any shortcode or widget. The plugin extends the default WordPress search so if you are already using it, then you are good to go.

Pricing: Free

11. Better Search

Better Search

Better Search is another great way to replace the default WordPress search with a slightly better search engine.

It allows you to search across all post types and find more relevant results. You can also assign a weight to items and improve the quality of search results.

It automatically replaces the default WordPress search. If your theme doesn’t already add a search form, then you can use the default search widget to add the search feature to your website.

Pricing: Free

12. Search Exclude

Search Exclude

Search Exclude allows you to simply exclude items you don’t want to be displayed in the WordPress search.

It adds a simple checkbox for posts, pages, and WooCommerce products that you can check if you want to exclude it from the search results. You can also go to the plugin’s settings page to see all the items that you have excluded from the search.

Pricing: Free

Which WordPress Search Plugin is The Best?

SearchWP is the best WordPress search plugin for most websites.

It offers a nice range of features, quality of search results is great and is affordable for small businesses. It has a WooCommerce addon and a free live search addon, both of them make your WooCommerce product search incredibly powerful.

However, if you are looking for a free and more powerful search then WP Google Search allows you to add Google Search to your WordPress site.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress search plugin for your website. You may also want to see our list of the must have WordPress plugins for small businesses, and the best WooCommerce plugins for all online stores.

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The post 12 WordPress Search Plugins to Improve Your Site Search appeared first on WPBeginner.


October 16, 2020 at 05:00PM