FolioVision

WordPress search yields very poor results. There have been some attempts to improve WordPress search, but the results are still far worse than what one can get from a Google search (try “site:yourdomain.com search term” to test). Google offers Custom Search Engines but either you have to allow ads or GCS can be very expensive (for a single site with middle level traffic, about $800/year). Really what Google wants is their ads in your search.
There have been attempts to create advanced search plugins based on open source search engine technology like Solar (i.e. Relevanssi). These attempts haven’t worked well.
<ul>
<li>they’ve been far too complex technologically (i.e. even with our full programming team we’d be booking dozens of hours per year maintaining our search custom search engines)</li>
<li>the out of the box versions don’t work well on large sites (limitations of MySQL Lite)</li>
<li>wildly inconsistent pricing (at one point Relevannsi would have cost us thousands of dollars per year for a single site).</li>
</ul>
One solution SearchWP works well for small sites but for our clients’ professional sites with thousands of posts, search would take two to five seconds and spike the CPU of the server.
After deploying every other solution for our large client sites (self-administered open source engines, Solar, Relevanssi, SearchWP), we were no closer to the holy grail of perfect WordPress search:
<ul>
<li>fast (even on large databases)</li>
<li>sensible rankings (not based on date but on relevance</li>
<li>tweakable (so clients can pull their most important posts to the top)</li>
<li>low maintenance</li>
<li>affordable</li>
</ul>
Then we found Swiftype.
Swiftype is the best WordPress search plugin available. It’s not just the plugin, it’s also a service, so their powerful server crawl your website and put together a coherent search index which brings great results.
More than that, you get full control over the search results. For example you can specify which pages should show up at the top of the search results. You can adjust importance of various fields and so on.
There’s a free version of Swiftype works for free which suit someone starting a weblog and affordable plans for either active bloggers and professional and even enterprise sites. You can group search across a network of sites to yield results from all of them.
There’s two kinds of Swiftype serach:
<ul>
<li>WordPress database (Swiftype offers a plugin)</li>
<li>External crawler (no plugin available)</li>
</ul>
We far prefer the external crawler. If you use the WordPress database, there is the risk of member only documents or even unpublished documents appearing in search. With the external crawler you are able to control what shows up in search (only public pages) and even use your Swiftype search as a control your content is properly published and indexed.
With the external crawler, your search can cover the non-Wordpress parts of your site in a single index. For example:
<ul>
<li>online store</li>
<li>forums</li>
<li>help documents</li>
</ul>
If the document can be read on the web the external plugin can index it.
Our Solution: a WordPress plugin for Swiftype External Crawler
To allow us to quickly and reliably deploy Swiftype we wrote a WordPress plugin which replaces default WordPress search with the Swiftype external crawler search. It’s literally single click upload to start offering first rate results across all the sites and subdomains you want indexed.
And once you have search inside Swiftype you can drag and drop the results to make sure your most relevant or most lucrative page is indexed first.

FV Swiftype

Use Swiftype external crawler engine for your search.

Nelio Software

David Aguilera

Get a list of Related Posts by querying your Swiftype account. If Swiftype is 
not available, it uses WordPress’ regular search system. By default, the 
related post search is performed using one of the available tags, but you can 
override it using your own search query string.
<blockquote>
Custom Templates 
 Version 2.1.0 let’s you define your own templates for displaying each related 
 post. Just create a directory named <code>neliosrp</code> in your theme’s directory and 
 create the template you want to use such as, for instance, 
 <code>template-name.php</code>. When inserting the widget, specify that the template is 
 <code>template-name</code> and you’re ready to go!
Warning Remember to save your templates somewhere save before updating 
 your theme!
(In the directory <code>template-examples</code> you’ll find some examples).
</blockquote>
Note If you want to use this plugin with your Swiftype account, please keep 
in mind you must have the official <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/swiftype-search/" rel="ugc">Swiftype 
Search</a> plugin installed.
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Swiftype-powered Search The list of related posts is built using your 
Swiftype account.</li>
<li>Regular WordPress Search You can also use the plugin without a Swiftype 
account. Just install the plugin and the regular WordPress search will be used.</li>
<li>Advanced search Related posts are based on tags. However, you can use 
your own search query.</li>
<li>Customization You can tweak a few details of the related post list, such 
as the section title, the number of words in the excerpt, or the number of days 
for the cache will be valid.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Featured On</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/swiftype/posts/518418398270015" rel="nofollow ugc">Swiftype’s Facebook 
Page</a> (Facebook)</li>
<li><a href="http://neliosoftware.com/nelio-related-posts/" rel="nofollow ugc">Our New Plugin–Nelio Related 
Posts</a> (Nelio’s blog)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Related Plugins by Nelio</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://nelioabtesting.com/?fp=wordpress.org" rel="nofollow ugc">Nelio A/B Testing</a> | 
<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/nelio-ab-testing/" rel="ugc">Download</a></li>
<li>Nelio External Featured Image | 
<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/external-featured-image/" rel="ugc">Download</a></li>
<li>Nelio Featured Posts | 
<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/nelio-featured-posts/" rel="ugc">Download</a></li>
</ul>
Featured image by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomtolkien/4821397096" rel="nofollow ugc">Thomas 
Tolkien</a>

Nelio Related Posts

Get a list of Related Posts by querying your Swiftype account, or using WordPress' regular search functions.

FV Swiftype vs Nelio Related Posts