Making WordPress Search Kick-ass with Elasticsearch

Discover the power that is Elasticsearch! Supercharge your site with the ability to implement autosuggest, fuzzy matching, search facets and relevant results in your next project. We’ll discuss why search is important, what Elasticsearch is and what it is capable of.

Transcript

1. Making WordPress Search Kick-ass with
   Elasticsearch
   aaronjholbrook
   aaronjholbrook.com
   

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3. Why is search important?
   

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4. More than half of all users are search dominant
   http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-and-you-may-find/
   

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5. Search lets users control their own destiny
   “I don't want to have to navigate this site the way they want me to. I
   just want to find the thing I'm looking for.”
   http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-visible-and-simple/
   

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7. Search is users’ escape hatch when they are stuck
   Make it easy to use, make it available
   http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-visible-and-simple/
   

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10. Assume most users will be unwilling or
    unable to refine their search query
    http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-visible-and-simple/
    

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12. Emphasis should be on increasing users’
    success on their first search attempt
    http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-visible-and-simple/
    

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13. Help users succeed before they even hit enter
    

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14. Most users cannot use advanced
    search or Boolean query syntax
    http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-visible-and-simple/
    

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15. Emphasize your search engine’s ability to handle simple
    queries and still produce high-quality results
    http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-navigation/
    

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17. WordPress Search (sucks)
    

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18. Poor Performance
    

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19. Inflexible and rigid matching algorithms
    (match based on regular expression)
    

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20. Does not comprehend typos or ‘close’ words
    

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21. Does not search metadata or taxonomies
    

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22. Can not (easily) determine facets of results
    

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23. Relevancy of results is poor
    

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24. Improving WordPress Search
    

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25. Improving WordPress Search
    with
    Elasticsearch
    

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26. Elasticsearch is a search server based on Lucene. It provides a
    distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with a
    RESTful web interface and schema-free JSON documents
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticsearch
    

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27. Elasticsearch is a search server based on Lucene. It provides a
    distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with a
    RESTful web interface and schema-free JSON documents
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticsearch
    

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28. Elasticsearch is a search server based on Lucene. It provides a
    distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with a
    RESTful web interface and schema-free JSON documents
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticsearch
    

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29. Elasticsearch is a search server based on Lucene. It provides a
    distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with a
    RESTful web interface and schema-free JSON documents
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticsearch
    

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30. Elasticsearch is a search server based on Lucene. It provides a
    distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with a
    RESTful web interface and schema-free JSON documents
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticsearch
    

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31. Relevant results
    

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32. Relevant results
    Autosuggest
    

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34. Relevant results
    Autosuggest
    Fuzzy Matching
    

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36. Relevant results
    Autosuggest
    Fuzzy Matching
    Proximity Search
    

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37. Relevant results
    Autosuggest
    Fuzzy Matching
    Proximity Search
    Search Metadata
    

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38. Relevant results
    Autosuggest
    Fuzzy Matching
    Proximity Search
    Search Metadata
    Search Taxonomies
    

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39. Relevant results
    Autosuggest
    Fuzzy Matching
    Proximity Search
    Search Metadata
    Search Taxonomies
    Facets
    

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43. Many more features:
    http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search.html
    

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44. ElasticPress
    

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46. Install the Elasticsearch Application
    https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch
    

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47. Install ElasticPress
    https://github.com/10up/ElasticPress
    

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48. Deep breath..
    

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49. Activate and connect to Elasticsearch address/port
    (default port is 9200)
    

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50. Success!
    

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51. Without ElasticPress With ElasticPress
    

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52. aaronjholbrook
    aaronjholbrook.com
    

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