Title: Relevanssi – A Better Search Author: Christoph Vielgrader Published: June 30, 2009 Last modified: March 16, 2026 --- Search plugins ![](https://ps.w.org/relevanssi/assets/banner-772x250.jpg?rev=1647180) ![](https://ps.w.org/relevanssi/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=2025044) # Relevanssi – A Better Search By [Christoph Vielgrader](https://profiles.wordpress.org/comesio/) [Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/relevanssi.4.26.1.zip) * [Details](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/#description) * [Reviews](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/#reviews) * [Installation](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/#installation) * [Development](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/#developers) [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/) ## Description Relevanssi replaces the standard WordPress search with a better search engine, with lots of features and configurable options. You’ll get better results, better presentation of results – your users will thank you. This is the free version of Relevanssi. There’s also Relevanssi Premium, which has added features. For more information about Premium, see [Relevanssi.com](https://www.relevanssi.com/). Do note that using Relevanssi may require large amounts (hundreds of megabytes) of database space (for a reasonable estimate, multiply the size of your `wp_posts` database table by three). If your hosting setup has a limited amount of space for database tables, using Relevanssi may cause problems. In those cases use of Relevanssi cannot be recommended. #### Key features * Search results sorted in the order of relevance, not by date. * Fuzzy matching: match partial words, if complete words don’t match. * Find documents matching either just one search term (OR query) or require all words to appear (AND query). * Search for phrases with quotes, for example “search phrase”. * Create custom excerpts that show where the hit was made, with the search terms highlighted. * Highlight search terms in the documents when user clicks through search results. * Search comments, tags, categories and custom fields. * Multisite friendly. * bbPress support. * Gutenberg friendly. #### Advanced features * Adjust the weighting for titles, tags and comments. * Log queries, show most popular queries and recent queries with no hits. * Restrict searches to categories and tags using a hidden variable or plugin settings. * Index custom post types and custom taxonomies. * Index the contents of shortcodes. * Google-style “Did you mean?” suggestions based on successful user searches. * Support for [WPML multi-language plugin](http://wpml.org/) and [Polylang](https://wordpress.org/plugins/polylang/). * Support for [s2member membership plugin](http://www.s2member.com/), [Members](https://wordpress.org/plugins/members/), [Groups](https://wordpress.org/plugins/groups/), [Simple Membership](https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-membership/) and other membership plugins. * Advanced filtering to help hacking the search results the way you want. * Search result throttling to improve performance on large databases. * Disable indexing of post content and post titles with a simple filter hook. #### Premium features (only in Relevanssi Premium) * Indexing attachment content (PDF, Office, Open Office). * Improved spelling correction in “Did you mean?” suggestions. * Searching across multiple sites in the same multisite installation. * Search and index user profiles. * Search and index taxonomy term pages (categories, tags, custom taxonomies). * Search and index arbitrary columns in wp_posts MySQL table. * Assign weights to any post types and taxonomies. * Assign extra weight to new posts. * Let the user choose between AND and OR searches, use + and – operator (AND and NOT). * Export and import settings. * [WP CLI commands](https://www.relevanssi.com/user-manual/wp-cli/). * [Related posts](https://www.relevanssi.com/knowledge-base/related-posts/). * [Redirects for searches](https://www.relevanssi.com/user-manual/redirects/). ### Thanks * Cristian Damm for tag indexing, comment indexing, post/page exclusion and general helpfulness. * Marcus Dalgren for UTF-8 fixing. * Warren Tape for 2.5.5 fixes. * Mohib Ebrahim for relentless bug hunting. * John Calahan for extensive 4.0 beta testing. ## Screenshots * [[ * Overview page * [[ * Indexing settings * [[ * Searching settings * [[ * Logging settings * [[ * Excerpts and highlights * [[ * Synonym settings * [[ * Stopword settings ## Installation 1. Install the plugin from the WordPress plugin screen. 2. Activate the plugin. 3. Go to the plugin settings page and build the index following the instructions there. 4. That’s it! Relevanssi uses the standard search form and doesn’t usually need any changes in the search results template. If the search does not bring any results, your theme probably has a query_posts() call in the search results template. That throws Relevanssi off. For more information, see [The most important Relevanssi debugging trick](https://www.relevanssi.com/knowledge-base/query_posts/). #### Uninstalling To uninstall the plugin remove the plugin using the normal WordPress plugin management tools (from the Plugins page, first Deactivate, then Delete). If you remove the plugin files manually, the database tables and options will remain. ## FAQ ### Knowledge Base You can find solutions and answers at the [Relevanssi Knowledge Base](https://www.relevanssi.com/category/knowledge-base/). ### Contextual help Answers to many common problems can be found from the contextual menu. Just click“ Help” in the top right corner of your WordPress admin dashboard on the Relevanssi settings page. ### Relevanssi doesn’t work If you the results don’t change after installing and activating Relevanssi, the most likely reason is that you have a call to `query_posts()` on your search results template. This confuses Relevanssi. Try removing the `query_posts()` call and see what happens. ### Searching for words with ampersands or hyphens doesn’t work Please read [Words with punctuation can’t be found](https://www.relevanssi.com/knowledge-base/words-ampersands-cant-found/). This is a Relevanssi feature, but you can fix it from Relevanssi indexing settings. ### Where are the user search logs? See the top of the admin menu. There’s ‘User searches’. ### Displaying the relevance score Relevanssi stores the relevance score it uses to sort results in the $post variable. Just add something like ``` echo $post->relevance_score ``` to your search results template inside a PHP code block to display the relevance score. ### Did you mean? suggestions Relevanssi offers Google-style “Did you mean?” suggestions. See [“Did you mean” suggestions](https://www.relevanssi.com/knowledge-base/did-you-mean-suggestions/) in the Knowledge Base for more details. ### What is tf * idf weighing? It’s the basic weighing scheme used in information retrieval. Tf stands for _term frequency_ while idf is _inverted document frequency_. Term frequency is simply the number of times the term appears in a document, while document frequency is the number of documents in the database where the term appears. Thus, the weight of the word for a document increases the more often it appears in the document and the less often it appears in other documents. ### What are stop words? Each document database is full of useless words. All the little words that appear in just about every document are completely useless for information retrieval purposes. Basically, their inverted document frequency is really low, so they never have much power in matching. Also, removing those words helps to make the index smaller and searching faster. ## Reviews ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/78fe0ff2f21ca24a8c62fae658d25108f5e1e1a45d7a64cf3a57160c5ca418ef? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Best Support for a very useful plugin for foodblogs](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/best-support-for-a-very-useful-plugin-for-foodblogs/)󠁿 [Vivien Bullert](https://profiles.wordpress.org/vivienbullert/) March 21, 2026 I was really at my wits’ end because the keyword ‘pasta’ couldn’t be found. So I got in touch with support and Mikko helped me straight away. I’d tried to sort it out on my own beforehand, but without success. I’m so glad it’s finally worked out! Thank you so much, Mikko, for your quick help! Brilliant!!!! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/535b1fdf777c18fc813dbd63e4a6a6177657b8ceb3ac3e2ef24c1d7f3f14569b? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[buen plugin pero….](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/buen-plugin-pero-7/)󠁿 [nnicosalvador](https://profiles.wordpress.org/hdmultimediaperu/) February 23, 2026 1 reply es un excelente plugin pero debería hacer búsqueda por número de parte del producto ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/3099fedbf9ac7e1f03a1f8fffb36647f1b6fdc691b998c0a48b544d2f6b09e52? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Maybe for small sites](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/maybe-for-small-sites/)󠁿 [egocefalo](https://profiles.wordpress.org/egocefalo/) February 17, 2026 1 reply Not if you have 200,000 plus posts and add a few more everyday. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6e7d68bb84a08ab02206afe1477f3f3628b484c06408a0e286c03d063708632? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[The search WordPress should have had](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/the-search-wordpress-should-have-had/)󠁿 [andrewwalkertechinsights](https://profiles.wordpress.org/andrewwalkertechinsights/) January 22, 2026 This plugin fixes WordPress search instantly. It finds results the default search misses, including custom fields. Essential for any serious site. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/097032274648bf968e3ecfbc8566a110d7173af205f0bd6ea73ffa5371ac4abd? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Truly one of the best made wp plugins ever.](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/truly-one-of-the-best-made-wp-plugins-ever/)󠁿 [jhtjards](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jhtjards/) November 28, 2025 Been using it for years on various big sites, multisite networks, etc that I’ve developed and it will always be my go-to search plugin. Works fantastically out of the box!- Great search results- Fast and light on your server resources- So many useful customisation options available in admin- PDF/Doc Indexing in Premium is ♥️But where it really comes into its own league, is when you have special requirements that no plugin could serve out of the box. There are loads of useful filters and actions to hook into, all super well documented. The Plugin code itself is very clean and readable, so if your requirement is really obscure you can always look under the hood and see what’s possible. (Usually anything is possible one way or the other.)And if you still get stuck, the support is the best.Hands down one of true unicorns in a world of plugin enshittification.Never change, Mikko! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/590c1a85322729f2345aa128684db6522b37951ea328215b6f501ed8439c0a91? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Night & Day!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/night-day/)󠁿 [Jimmy Lee](https://profiles.wordpress.org/shirtguy72/) August 31, 2025 The difference is Night and Day! Thanks you for this beautiful piece of work! [ Read all 404 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/reviews/) ## Contributors & Developers “Relevanssi – A Better Search” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin. Contributors * [ Christoph Vielgrader ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/comesio/) * [ Mikko Saari ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/msaari/) “Relevanssi – A Better Search” has been translated into 17 locales. Thank you to [the translators](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/relevanssi/contributors) for their contributions. [Translate “Relevanssi – A Better Search” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/relevanssi) ### Interested in development? [Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/), check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/relevanssi/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/relevanssi/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/relevanssi/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss). ## Changelog #### 4.26.1 * Changed behaviour: The `relevanssi_results` filter hook gets the search query as a second parameter. * Changed behaviour: Exact match bonus was added to posts once per search term. Now it’s applied once per post. * Minor fix: Exact match bonus is now significantly faster when processing large posts. * Minor fix: Post part targeting with phrases is now more precise and doesn’t include false matches. New post part tag ‘media’ is available to target attachment content. #### 4.26.0 * Security: Fixes a vulnerability where a contributor-level user could make a SQL injection. * Minor fix: Relevanssi now ignores the contents of SVG tags. * Minor fix: The `relevanssi_missing_sort_key` hook did not fire for `menu_order`. It does now, if `menu_order` is 0. * Minor fix: Relevanssi no longer breaks image cloning in MultilingualPress. * Minor fix: Synced pattern contents are now indexed recursively so that, for example, the `relevanssi_noindex` class works. ## Meta * Version **4.26.1** * Last updated **4 weeks ago** * Active installations **100,000+** * WordPress version ** 4.9 or higher ** * Tested up to **6.9.4** * PHP version ** 7.1 or higher ** * Languages * [Czech](https://cs.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Dutch](https://nl.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Dutch (Belgium)](https://nl-be.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Finnish](https://fi.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [French (France)](https://fr.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [German](https://de.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Italian](https://it.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Japanese](https://ja.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Korean](https://ko.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Portuguese (Brazil)](https://br.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Russian](https://ru.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Spanish (Chile)](https://cl.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Spanish (Colombia)](https://es-co.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Spanish (Ecuador)](https://es-ec.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Spanish (Spain)](https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), [Spanish (Venezuela)](https://ve.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/), and [Swedish](https://sv.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/). * [Translate into your language](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/relevanssi) * Tags * [better search](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/better-search/)[product search](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/product-search/) [relevance](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/relevance/)[search](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/search/) [woocommerce search](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/woocommerce-search/) * [Advanced View](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/advanced/) ## Ratings 4.8 out of 5 stars. * [ 368 5-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/reviews/?filter=5) * [ 12 4-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/reviews/?filter=4) * [ 4 3-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/reviews/?filter=3) * [ 4 2-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/reviews/?filter=2) * [ 16 1-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/reviews/?filter=1) [Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/reviews/#new-post) [See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/reviews/) ## Contributors * [ Christoph Vielgrader ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/comesio/) * [ Mikko Saari ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/msaari/) ## Support Issues resolved in last two months: 4 out of 8 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/relevanssi/) ## Donate Would you like to support the advancement of this plugin? [ Donate to this plugin ](https://www.relevanssi.com/buy-premium/)