The Search tab of the Better Search settings page offers a collection of options that allow you to fine-tune how search results are generated, displayed, and filtered. Below is an explanation of each available setting.
Search Configuration
Number of Search Results per page
Set the maximum number of search results displayed per page.
Post types to include
Select which post types you want to include in the search results (e.g., post, page, custom post types).
Enable MySQL FULLTEXT searching
Disabling this option will no longer give relevance-based results. If you’re using Better Search Pro, you will see the installation status of the FULLTEXT indexes along with a button which allows you to recreate them.
Minimum characters (Pro only)
Minimum characters required for a fulltext search. If the search term has fewer characters, a LIKE search will be performed instead.
Activate BOOLEAN mode
Use MySQL BOOLEAN mode for FULLTEXT searches. Allows advanced operators, but may limit some relevancy features. MySQL BOOLEAN Mode DocumentationOpens in a new window.
BOOLEAN mode operators
With BOOLEAN mode active, visitors can use the following operators in the search box. They are passed straight through to MySQL.
| Operator | Example | What it does |
|---|---|---|
+ | +wordpress plugin | The word must be present in every result. |
- | wordpress -theme | The word must not be present. Posts containing it are removed from the results entirely. |
~ | wordpress ~beta | Demotes rather than excludes. The post is still returned, but the word contributes negatively to its relevance score, so it ranks lower. |
> | >plugin | Increases the word’s contribution to the relevance score, pushing matching posts higher up the results. |
< | <theme | Decreases the word’s contribution, pushing matching posts lower down the results. |
* | plug* | Trailing wildcard. Matches plugin, plugins, plugged, and so on. |
"" | "wordpress plugin" | Exact phrase match. |
( ) | +wordpress +(plugin theme) | Groups words into a subexpression, so operators can be applied to the group. |
A few things worth knowing:
-and~are not the same.-filters a post out of the results;~keeps it but ranks it lower. Use~for “noise” words that shouldn’t disqualify a post.>and<only affect ranking, not matching. They change the relevance score, so the effect is only visible when results are sorted by relevance (the default). They also do not make a word required — a word with no+in front of it stays optional. A typical use is inside a group:+wordpress +(>plugin <theme)returns posts containing “wordpress” plus at least one of “plugin” or “theme”, ranking the “plugin” matches higher.- Very short words are ignored. MySQL skips words below its minimum token length — 3 characters for InnoDB (
innodb_ft_min_token_size) and 4 for MyISAM (ft_min_word_len) by default. - Phrase searches work even with BOOLEAN mode off. If a query contains double-quoted text, Better Search enables BOOLEAN mode automatically for that query so the phrase is matched correctly.
- Fuzzy search is skipped for these queries. If a search uses any of
+ - ~ > < *, fuzzy matching is automatically disabled for it, since the visitor has asked for a precise query. - A query can be nothing but exclusions.
-themeon its own returns every post that does not contain “theme”, rather than no results. Exclusions are applied across each of the search fields you have enabled below, and are preserved when fuzzy LIKE matching is in use.
Enable LIKE fallback (Pro only)
If FULLTEXT returns zero results, a LIKE search is performed instead.
Minimum relevance percentage (Pro only)
The minimum relevance percentage required for a post to be included in the search results (0–100).
Fuzzy search level (Pro only)
Enable fuzzy search and adjust the level of flexibility for matching search terms that contain misspellings. Higher levels may include more results with potential misspellings.
“Did you mean” suggestions (Pro only)
These settings only appear when “Did you mean” suggestions is turned on in the Features tab. See Did You Mean Spelling Suggestions for full configuration details.
Minimum searches to qualify as a suggestion — a term must have been searched at least this many times before it can be suggested as a correction. Default: 3.
“Did you mean” mode — Suggest (“Did you mean”) shows a “Did you mean” link but still displays the original (empty) results. Auto-correct transparently re-runs the search with the corrected term when it actually returns results, showing a link back to the original query.
Use enchant as a fallback — falls back to the server’s enchant spellchecker if your search log and site content have no close match. Disabled if the extension isn’t installed. See Installing enchant on your server.
Weighting
Post title
The weight to give to the post title when calculating the relevance of the post. Set this to a higher number than the following option to prioritize the post title in the relevance calculation.
Post content
The weight to give to the post content when calculating the relevance of the post.
Post excerpt (Pro only)
Set the importance of the post excerpt in relevance calculation.
Categories (Pro only)
Set the weight for category matches in relevance calculation.
Tags (Pro only)
Set the weight for tag matches in relevance calculation.
Default taxonomy weight (Pro only)
Weight to give other taxonomy matches when calculating relevance.
Post slug (Pro only)
Score added when the post slug matches. Requires Search Post slug under Inclusion options. Unlike the title and content weights, this adds a flat score to any post whose slug matches. Default: 0.
Meta fields (Pro only)
Score added when a meta value matches. Requires Search Meta under Inclusion options. Scoring meta matches adds a subquery for every candidate post, so leave this at 0 on sites with a large postmeta table. Default: 0.
Authors (Pro only)
Score added when the author name matches. Requires Search Authors under Inclusion options. Default: 0.
Comments (Pro only)
Score added when a comment matches. Requires Search Comments under Inclusion options. Scoring comment matches adds a subquery for every candidate post, so leave this at 0 on sites with a large comments table. Default: 0.
Recency boost (%) (Pro only)
Blend post age into relevance ordering. The default is 0, which disables the boost. Set a value from 0 to 200 to favor newer results. A higher value gives freshness more influence, but a strongly relevant older result can still outrank a weakly relevant newer result. This setting applies when results are ordered by relevance or relatedness and has no effect on date, title, or random ordering. It is unavailable on SQLite.
Recency half-life (days) (Pro only)
Set how quickly the recency boost decays. The default is 180 days and the accepted range is 1 to 36,500 days. At the half-life, a result receives half of its available recency boost. Larger values keep older content competitive for longer. Values below 7 days recalculate hourly; values of 7 days or more recalculate daily.
Use precomputed taxonomy score (Pro only)
Enable the use of precomputed taxonomy scores for relevance calculation. Improves performance but ignores the above taxonomy weights for live queries. This only works when ECSI is enabled in the Performance tab.
Inclusion options
Search Post slug (Pro only)
Include post slugs in the search.
Search Excerpt
Include post excerpts in the search.
Search Taxonomies
Include posts where all taxonomies (categories, tags, custom taxonomies) match the search terms.
Search Meta
Include posts where meta values match the search terms.
On sites with a large postmeta table this is often the most expensive part of the query, because every meta key is searched. Use the bsearch_search_meta_keys filter to restrict the search to the keys you actually want. Returning an empty array keeps the default behavior of searching all keys.
Search Authors
Include posts from authors that match the search terms.
Search Comments
Include posts where comments include the search terms.
Term inclusion options
These options restrict search results to the selected terms. Leave blank to search everything.
Only include Categories
Comma-separated list of category slugs to include. Only posts assigned to these categories are returned in search results. Autocomplete is available.
In Pro this setting is labeled Only include Terms and accepts terms from any public taxonomy, not just categories. On a multisite network, the settings apply to the site where they are configured.
Exclusion options
Exclude password-protected posts
Remove password-protected posts from search results.
Exclude post IDs
Enter a comma-separated list of post/page/custom post type IDs to exclude (e.g., 188,1024,50).
Exclude Categories
Comma-separated list of category slugs to exclude. Autocomplete is available.
In Pro this setting is labeled Exclude Terms and accepts terms from any public taxonomy, not just categories. On a multisite network, the settings apply to the site where they are configured.
Exclude category IDs
Removed in v4.5.0. This readonly field no longer exists. The category slugs entered above are converted to internal category IDs automatically when the settings are saved. These IDs use term_taxonomy_id, which may differ from the IDs on the Categories page.
Exclude Front page (Pro only)
When enabled, excludes the front page from search results.
Exclude Posts page (Pro only)
When enabled, excludes the Posts page from search results.
Banned words options
Filter these words
Words in this list will be stripped out of the search results. Enter as a comma-separated list. Use * as a wildcard for any run of letters or digits: spam* also matches “spammer”. Other characters are matched literally, and an entry made only of wildcards is ignored.
Match whole words only
When enabled, only whole words in the search query are filtered. Partial matches are ignored (e.g., “grow” will not ban “grown” or “grower”).
Block searches containing banned words
When enabled, no results are returned if the search query includes any banned words. If Seamless mode is disabled, an error message is displayed. With Seamless mode enabled, a “Nothing found” message is shown (customizable via your theme).
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