Fuzzy Matches

What is Fuzzy Search?

Fuzzy search helps users find results even if their query contains typos, misspellings, or partial matches. By loosening the search criteria, fuzzy search improves accuracy and user satisfaction, especially for sites with a diverse audience or complex search terms.

Why Use Fuzzy Search?

• Handles errors: Captures results for common misspellings or typos.
• Improves flexibility: Matches variations of terms (e.g., “colour” and “color”).
• Boosts engagement: Users find what they need even with imperfect queries.

This is ideal for e-commerce sites, educational resources, or content-heavy platforms where users might not always type exact keywords.

How to Enable Fuzzy Search

Better Search Pro includes a setting to enable and customise fuzzy search levels:

1. Go to Better Search → Settings in the WordPress admin.
2. Under the Search tab, locate the setting Fuzzy search level.
3. Select the desired level of weightage that fuzzy matches add to the Better Search algorithm:
   • Off: Disables fuzzy search.
   • Low: Slightly relaxed matching criteria.
   • Medium: Moderately relaxed criteria for broader matches.
   • High: Most flexible, fuzzy searches are given the highest weightage.
4. If this is the first time that you’ve enabled this feature, then hit the button ‘Create fuzzy search indexes’ to add the necessary functions to your WordPress database. Without these, the fuzzy searching will fail!
5. Save your changes.

Important Considerations

• Searches titles only: To maintain speed and performance, the fuzzy search only checks the words against the post title.
• Resource-intensive: Fuzzy search can be computationally intensive, especially at higher levels. On high-traffic sites, this could impact performance.
• Enable caching: To mitigate load, ensure caching is enabled via your server, a WordPress plugin, or Better Search’s built-in options.