In the WordPress ecosystem, there are a lot of plugins, a lot of them are up-to-date, let say 50%. As a kind of game, I’ve got all of working plugins in a private directory. Working means that either people says the plugin works for the last version of WordPress, either the plugin is tagged as working by the author.
As it have more than 9,500 registered posts, some pages and custom post types, this directory was for me a very interesting posts database, which helped me when I tested plugins for search, and when I built WP-ISE.
Installation / Settings
Installing a plugin in WordPress is really easy, so we do not speak about install process itself, but about post-activation / before use process.
While WP-ISE works well out of the box without any special settings, the other plugins require an indexing of the site. If indexing with WP-Search2 was easy and without any issue, even if it took time, Relevanssi didn’t performed the transaction in a single shot. WP-Search also asked me write permissions for two sub-directories before indexing. Not so hard, but require to perform some tasks on FTP too.
Results
I will not give you results for each plugin I tested, but here are 3 screenshots of search results page for the terms: contact form 7 with 2 well known search plugins (even better than WordPress default search engine), and of course with WP-ISE. Note that this directory is not regularly maintained, so they can be some differences between version displayed on screenshots and actual official WordPress plugins directory.
First screenshot is WP Search 2 results first page. Second one is the same page, with Relevanssi free edition. Last screenshot is for WP-ISE.
I let you assess results, and choose which plugin you want to install on your own website. Just a single comment: WP-ISE is the single plugin having contact form 7 plugin in it first results page, in pole position.
WP Search 2 results
Relevanssi results
WP-ISE results
By the way, I do not say that my plugin is perfect. I do not say that it is the best in all circumstances. Those 3 plugins are free, or at least have a free version. So, try by yourself on your own dataset, and choose the one that fits your needs…
March 29, 2013 at 4:51 PM
It is important to focus on the Seo relevance to improve the poor WP search. Relevanssi bloated my database since I use to write very long articles, so I disinstalled, but my visits drop sensibly. So I decided to install again a search plugin and switch to WP-ISE. My database is not bloated now, and the search function seems to me even better than Relevanssi. Thanks.
March 29, 2013 at 5:37 PM
Thanks Giuliana for sharing your experience! May I ask you your blog url? By the way, if you fill the website field for comments, it is also good for SEO…
March 31, 2013 at 12:46 PM
site url is http://www.labyrinthdesigners.org.
March 31, 2013 at 2:55 PM
I’ve take a look to your blog. As you said, your articles are long articles… No design, no widgets, no extras: just content. May I suggest you to use the power of excerpt field (not the part before the
<!--more-->tag) for an improved SEO experience? You can use it for meta description for example, adding valuable content for search engines.March 31, 2013 at 7:50 PM
You are right. Sadly the part before the and the excerpt are the same.
March 31, 2013 at 8:08 PM
Now that you made me check, I have discovered that the picture, being before all text, is taken as meta description. Furthermore I have an extra plugin to generate a map, together with a description, of all pictures. I should move pictures away from the top. Thanks for your interest.
April 1, 2013 at 12:05 AM
Did you try YOAST SEO plugin? This is state of the art of SEO plugins for WordPress… Sure it will take time (a few minuts for each post) but as you write long articles, it’s not so much compared to benefits if you really want to improve your ranking.
April 1, 2013 at 1:27 PM
It is a case of telepathy: already installed a few hours ago. Thanks for all.