Being able to easily find what they’re looking for on your website can make or break your visitors’ experience. Unfortunately, WordPress’ default search functionality is limited and unreliable, leading many to depend on plugins and other technologies for search. Learn about the different options available and how to choose a search technology for your site.

1. PANTHEON.IO
Making WordPress Search a Party

2. PANTHEON.IO
Speakers
Josh Koenig
Co-Founder & Head of
Developer Experience,
Pantheon
Joe Dooley
Lead Developer,
The CRUSH Agency

3. PANTHEON.IO
Why is Search Important?
● Average conversion went from
1.7% to 2.4% with on-site search.1
● Only 37% of users who search find
what they are looking for.2
● 75% of users don’t go past page
one of search results.1
1, http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14416/100-Awesome-Marketing-Stats-Charts-Graphs-Data.aspx
2. http://www.uie.com/articles/users_search_once/

4. PANTHEON.IO
Why is Search Important?
● Huge opportunity for
engagement / conversion.
● Status quo is not great: easy
to beat expectations.
● Site search can provide
valuable analytics insights.
● Surface usability issues.

5. PANTHEON.IO
WordPress Default Search
If you’re using WP as a content-management system instead of just
running a small blog, the basic search will leave you in trouble. The
default WordPress search leaves you without your best search results first.
Default WP Search can be summed up as - Find any post that mentions these keywords
in the post title or content and return them ordered by date descending.
- The search lists the results in date order, latest first. This is rarely useful.
- Searches for the exact query, nothing less and nothing more.
- No Site Network search capabilities

6. PANTHEON.IO
Existing Search Platforms
- Pros and Cons
Relevanssi - replaces the default search with a partial-match search
that sorts results by relevance. Indexes comments and shortcode content.
Search & Filter Pro - Search by custom fields, post meta, taxonomies,
tags, categories, authors, post types, post dates.
FacetWP - Amazon-like filtering to any WordPress content listing. It allows users to
quickly browse and drill-down through your site's content to find exactly what they're
looking for.
Google Custom Search - Effective, but has a number of drawbacks that force
concessions when it comes to design. There’s a branded search field, search results
have ads (unless you pay to get them off), and it’s sometimes really difficult to give
search the attention you’ve afforded everywhere else.

7. PANTHEON.IO
Some Examples
Avedro - The World Leader in Corneal Cross-Linking Science
Problem: We needed a premium WordPress search solution that allowed us to search and filter by
custom post type.
Solution: The only solution was a premium
plugin, Search and Filter Pro.
This was time consuming because we had to
evaluate the pros and cons of each plugin and
figure out how to use each plugin.

8. PANTHEON.IO
MySQL is not a Search Engine
● It’s not WordPress’s fault.
● Relational databases are
designed for transactions,
and to index / join on keys.
● Full-text indexing exists,
but performs horribly.
● Matching doesn’t mean
relevant.

9. PANTHEON.IO
All About Solr
● Solr is an open
source enterprise
search engine
● Built on Apache
Lucene
● Talks to websites
over HTTP API

10. PANTHEON.IO
All About Solr
● Used by some of the most heavily
trafficked sites on the internet
● Advanced capabilities like full-text
search, faceted search, geo-spatial
search

11. PANTHEON.IO
All About Solr
Faster than WordPress default search
More accurate matching
Scales to billions of documents
Features like spell check, highlighting, faceting, built in

12. PANTHEON.IO
Things You Can Do With Solr
Have an awesome search experience
cnet.com

13. PANTHEON.IO
Things You Can Do With Solr
Related content widgets
freepeople.com

14. PANTHEON.IO
Things You Can Do With Solr
Turbocharge WP_Query performance
Default Search

15. PANTHEON.IO
Things You Can Do With Solr
Autocompletes and other UI improvements
sears.com

16. PANTHEON.IO
Solr Challenges
● Java infrastructure
● Complex XML configuration
● No security or authentication

17. PANTHEON.IO
Pantheon’s Solr Backend Service
● We provide a separate index for
every environment
● Authentication and encryption is
automatic
● Zero configuration: the search
service “just works”
● Used by 1000s of Drupal sites (and
a few WP sites) already

18. PANTHEON.IO
Pantheon’s New Solr Plugin for WordPress
● Beta version coming to
WordPress.org plugin
directory soon.
● The alpha developer
version is available now on
GitHub.
● Anyone can use the plugin
as long as you provide a
backend to run it on.

19. PANTHEON.IO
● Your visitors deserve a killer search experience.
● WordPress’ default search can only go so far — it lacks
in relevance, scalability, and speed.
● There are many options for search plugins and services.
● Pantheon is releasing an open source Solr plugin - use
it with your own backend or run it on Pantheon.
Summary - Search Matters

20. PANTHEON.IO
Summary - For Agencies
Consistency - developers will know how to use
Solr on each and every site.
Clients - We’re able to provide our clients with a turnkey
solution for a first-class search experience.

21. PANTHEON.IO
Try It Now
https://github.com/pantheon-systems/solr-for-wordpress

22. PANTHEON.IO
Questions?