Making WordPress Search Kick-ass with
Elasticsearch
aaronjholbrook
aaronjholbrook.com
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Why is search important?
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More than half of all users are search dominant
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-and-you-may-find/
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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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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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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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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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Help users succeed before they even hit enter
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Most users cannot use advanced
search or Boolean query syntax
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-visible-and-simple/
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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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WordPress Search (sucks)
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Poor Performance
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Inflexible and rigid matching algorithms
(match based on regular expression)
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Does not comprehend typos or ‘close’ words
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Does not search metadata or taxonomies
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Can not (easily) determine facets of results
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Relevancy of results is poor
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Improving WordPress Search
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Improving WordPress Search
with
Elasticsearch
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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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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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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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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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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