Better Search v4.5: AI answers, ranking controls and more
Finding the right page can take several searches when a visitor starts with a question. In Better Search 4.5.0, I’ve added optional Pro AI answers grounded in your site’s search results, alongside fixes to search accuracy, caching, and performance.
This release also adds more control over ranking and filtering. Free and Pro now require WordPress 6.9 or later.
Answer questions from your content in Pro
AI answers use articles retrieved by Better Search as context, with source links so visitors can read the underlying content. The feature is in beta, disabled by default, and needs a provider connected through the WordPress AI Client introduced in WordPress 7.0Opens in a new window.
Cached answers reduce repeated provider requests. Daily and per-visitor limits give you control over usage. When several visitors ask the same uncached question at once, the later requests wait for the first answer instead of paying for a duplicate call.
When the system can’t find an answer, the Fallback message points the visitor to ordinary search results. Provider failures show a separate Unavailable message.
The optional Content gaps report groups unanswered questions. It gives you a record of what visitors asked that your current content couldn’t answer, which can help decide what to write or clarify next.
Pro also adds WP-CLI commands for questions, the answer cache and Content gaps.
Adjust what influences ranking
Pro now supports separate ranking weights for matches in post slugs, metadata, authors and comments. If those fields carry useful information on your site, you can control their contribution to the score.
Optional recency weighting adds a preference for newer posts. It’s disabled by default, so updating won’t enable it for you.
These controls extend the existing options described in the search settings guide.
Existing custom-table indexes need a one-time Recency Ranking Backfill from Tools before recency weighting can take effect. It fills in publication dates for older index rows; the custom-table search path keeps recency weighting off until the backfill finishes.
Filter results and route searches
A new Only include Categories setting restricts results to selected categories. Filter these words now accepts * wildcards, so spam* also matches “spammer.”
Pro labels that setting Only include Terms, expands include and exclude settings to all public taxonomies and adds wildcard search redirects. A rule such as help* can route several related search phrases to one destination. Exact matches take priority over wildcard rules, which take priority over contains rules.
Fixes for existing sites
Custom image sizes could inject markup into thumbnails. Better Search now converts thumbnail widths and heights to integers before output.
Search results could appear in the wrong language. Cached results now separate WPML, Polylang and TranslatePress languages. TranslatePress live-search suggestions also get translated titles and language-specific links.
Searching several fields could time out on large sites. LIKE matching across taxonomies, metadata, authors and comments no longer multiplies database rows. Pro custom-table queries also receive performance improvements.
Network caches could survive settings changes and manual clearing. Cache clearing now covers both site and network results. Nested queries no longer interfere with the owning query’s cache handling.
Other fixes in this release:
- Live-search suggestions could reopen after pressing Escape or submitting the search.
- Pro custom-table searches could show empty pages.
- Pro multisite searches could repeat, skip or return posts from the wrong site.
- Pro fuzzy searches could ignore Boolean operators or match common words.
Forms with their own suggestions can now opt out of Better Search live search using data-bsearch-live-search="off".
Diagnostics and integrations
A new Status section in Tools reports database, index and cache health. Pro adds custom-table and AI-provider checks.
The WordPress Abilities API can now run site searches. Pro adds abilities for popular search terms, spelling suggestions and cache clearing. You can disable the integration in Features.
Upgrade notes
- Confirm that your site runs WordPress 6.9 or later before updating.
- After updating, check the Status section in Tools.
- If you use Pro custom tables and want recency weighting, complete Recency Ranking Backfill before testing it.
- If you enable AI answers under Settings → AI (Beta), connect a provider through the WordPress AI Client and set the usage limits, then test questions against your site’s content. Enable Content gaps separately if you want to record unanswered questions.