WordPress Autocomplete Search Setup Guide No Code Required!

Want to add WordPress autocomplete search functionality to your website? You know where visitors start typing in their query and your site automatically helps them finish their search and/or suggests content that matches.Google, Amazon, and tons of other sites use this approach because it offers visitors a helpful search experience. And with the right WordPress autocomplete search plugin, you can add the same functionality to your site.By the end of this post, youll be able to add live search functionality to any WordPress site, including WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads stores. An example of the WordPress autocomplete functionality that youll be able to add to your site. You can see both the autocomplete and the content suggestions.After having tested several plugins to help you add live search to WordPress, we settled on Ajax Search Lite because:Its easy to set up.The free version will work for most sites.Its very flexible.Its popular and receives regular updates.The plugin h elps you add live search suggestions and taps into Googles autocomplete functionality to add autocomplete to your search box. Ajax Search Lite Author(s): Ernest MarcinkoCurrent Version: 4.8Last Updated: September 25, 2019ajax-search-lite.4.8.zip 94%Ratings 473,558Downloads WP 3.5+Requires To get started, make sure to install and activate the plugin on your site (heres how to install a WordPress plugin if you need some help).Once youve activated the plugin, follow these steps to configure your new WordPress autocomplete search functionality†¦Step 1: Choose what content to include in searchThe first thing that youll want to do is configure what content is eligible to be included in your search suggestions.For example, maybe you want your suggestions to include blog posts, but not pages. If youre using custom post types (like WooCommerce products or an event plugin), you can also choose whether or not to include that content in your search results.To make those choices, cl ick on the Ajax Search Lite option in your WordPress dashboard and use the Search in custom post types options to choose what content is eligible:Further down the page, you can also choose what parts of your content the plugin searches. By default, it will search for the users keyword in your contents:TitleBodyExcerptBut you can also have it search in:URL slugCategories and tagsCustom fields (either specific custom fields or all custom fields)Step 2: Choose how to display content in suggestion resultsBy default, the plugin will display a lot of information in the suggestion results. It includes the:TitleExcerptFeatured imageHeres an example of how the default settings look:You have full control over what information displays, though.If you want to control the image (or turn it off), go to the Image Options tab. You can turn off the Show images in results? option to disable images. Or, you can use the other options to change:Image sizeWhere the image comes fromSimilarly, if you go to Layout options → Results Layout, you can control exactly what text information displays:Step 3: Configure how the search box looksOne of the ways that the plugin works is by replacing your themes search box with its own design, so youll want to make sure that the plugins search box design matches your existing theme.To control that, go to Layout Options and use the themes to customize how your search box looks:You can also manually change the colors further down the page if needed.Step 4: Add your search box (or replace your themes search box)Ok now youre ready to actually add the WordPress autocomplete functionality to your site.To do that, the plugin gives you three options:Replace theme search with this option, the plugin will override your themes search functionality. For example, if you opt to use this, the plugin will replace the regular WordPress Search widget with its own search box and functionality.Shortcode you can place the shortcode wherever you want your sea rch form to appear (you can use the shortcode in pages, posts, sidebar widgets, etc.)PHP function if youre comfortable editing your themes code, you can use a child theme to add the search functionality directly to your themes template files.The plugin gives you the shortcode and PHP function at the top of the page. And you can turn on the search replacement setting in the General Options tab:For example, you can see two search boxes below. The search box inside the page content is added using the shortcode, while the search box in the sidebar is using a regular WordPress Search widget and the plugins replace theme search functionality:And thats it! Your visitors will now be able to enjoy WordPress autocomplete search on your site.Step 5: Further refine how the plugin works (optional)If you want to further refine things, the plugin includes a number of settings that give you even more control over exactly how your WordPress live search works.These settings are all optional that is , your live search will work fine even if you skip this section.But if you want some more control, here are some helpful ways to tweak things†¦Tweak the autocomplete functionalityThe plugin turns on search autocomplete by default. But if you want to refine how it works, you can go to General Options → Autocomplete Suggestions:Give visitors filter optionsIf you want to give visitors more control over the search results, you can add filter options that let users:Search certain content, like only a posts titleSearch specific categoriesHeres an example:To turn these options on, go to the Frontend Options area:Choose how the plugin treats keywordsIf you want to change how the plugin comes up with its results, the General Options → Behavior area lets you:Show exact matches only when turned on, the autosuggest results must exactly match the users keywords (kind of like using quotes when searching in Google).Keyword phrase logic gives you another way to control how the plugin matches results.Change the results orderBy default, the plugin orders its suggestions by their relevance. But if you want, you can change this behavior to order results by:DateTitleTo make this change, go to General Options → Ordering:Get started with WordPress live search suggestions today!Autocomplete and autosuggest are two great ways to improve your WordPress sites search functionality.To add WordPress autocomplete search to your site, Ajax Search Lite is a great option that wont cost you a penny.To get started with the plugin, all you need to do is:Choose what content to include in the suggestionsConfigure what information displays for each suggestionChoose how your search box should lookDisplay your search box on your front-end site using one of the three included optionsDo you have any other questions about adding autocomplete search to your WordPress site? Leave a comment and well try to help out! Want to improve your #WordPress site search? Learn how to add a utocomplete suggestions