Have you ever visited a WooCommerce store and found it hard to discover a product? That’s exactly what a terrible search does: it annoys customers and kills sales.
For online store owners, having a fast, accurate, and “smart” search bar is no longer a luxury. Consumers expect searches to be immediate, they expect auto-suggestions, and they expect smart filtering similar to what they use in Amazon.
This is when you can use a WooCommerce search plugin. They replace not only the basic WordPress search function, but they also create a sales tool.
We have outlined 7 Very Powerful WooCommerce search plugins with fast results, filter options, and smart auto-complete features. So whether you want a free search plugin or an AI plugin, we have a solution for every store.
1. YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search
YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search provides instant matching results and product suggestions. This function is functional for stores with large catalogs, as the intelligent search will allow your users to see matching results dynamically in the suggestions bar, via AJAX, as they are typing in your search bar, without having to reload the product listing page.
ITH WooCommerce Ajax Search provides SKU search results and will display category, product images, and prices with clickable options in the suggestions bar that will streamline your customers’ search for products. The premium version includes search filtering options and is optimized for mobile devices.
Main Features of YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search:
Instant AJAX Search Suggestion: AJAX suggests products as sites load, so respective products show to customers while search is happening with no page reloads.
Smart Search Criteria: Users search for products using SKU, title, category, and/or tag to get a more accurate search result.
Custom Layout Styles: Full customisation options to change the layout and styles of the search box to suit the theme of your site.
Variable Products Conformance: This will fully support variable products, so searching users can easily and efficiently find their desired variation (size/color).
Multi-language (WPML) Support: Great for multi-lingual WooCommerce stores since it is WPML compatible.
2. Advanced Woo Search
Advanced Woo Search is a smart and flexible plugin that allows users to search on the full product title, content, excerpt, tags, categories, and even custom fields. It is an AJAX-based search engine that allows for real-time results and full control over what product data is searchable.
One of the major highlights of this plugin is that it is compatible with popular page builders and multilingual plugins. Store owners also have the option to use custom templates to style each search result and match their store theme. For custom features, consider working with a WooCommerce plugin development company.
Main Features of Advanced Woo Search:
Live AJAX Search: Provides search as you type for a great search experience.
Advanced Search Filters: Provides search by SKU, title, product tags, attributes, and more. Precise searching.
Good WooCommerce Integration: Full indexing of products and product metadata specifically for WooCommerce.
Multilingual: Fully WPML and Polylang compatible, for shops that run in multiple languages.
Data Connection: Allows the integration of Google Analytics so you can analyze what users search for to better expose and display your product.
3. WooCommerce Product Search
Created by the WooCommerce team’s official plugin building partners, this plugin provides advanced integration and filtering options. It enhances front-end and back-end search capabilities, improves the customer search experience, and offers valuable keyword analytics for store admins.
It comes with a live search, search weights, and layered navigation filter options. It also has support for shortcodes and widget options, and can easily be embedded in product pages, headers, or sidebars.
Main Features of WooCommerce Product Search:
Instant Live Search: Provides quick product results while the user types, enhancing the shopping experience.
Advanced Filters & Sorting: Filters and sorting that are advanced enough to help identify products for the user.
Keyword Weighting: Allows you to weight your product fields for relevancy in results
Endless Display Options: You can use widgets or shortcodes to place the search anywhere throughout your site.
Search Analytics: Has built-in reports to look into what customers are searching for and track their searches.
4. Doofinder
Doofinder is an AI-powered search plugin that enhances product discovery on WooCommerce sites, with intelligent algorithms and personalisation features. The search filter offers advanced filtering, autocomplete, and live ranking of search results based on user behaviour and individual and collective historical data.
In addition to product searches, Doofinder also has promotional banner images inside the dropdown search box to help stores cross-sell products or push campaigns of the banners. While it is indeed a premium tool, the 30-day free trial allows you plenty of use to see if it pushes your conversions. For store owners needing tailored functionality beyond what’s available out of the box, WooCommerce custom plugin development can help build features that work seamlessly alongside tools like Doofinder.
Main Highlights of Doofinder:
AI Autocomplete Functionality: Uses machine learning to suggest relevant products while customers type.
Elastic Search Indexing: Searches SKUs, tags, attributes, and custom fields.
Analytics Built In: Logs search behavior and conversions to help improve better performance of the store.
Search Banner Ads: Let’s you include promotional banners inside the live search dropdown.
WooCommerce Integrates Seamlessly: Installs easily and runs smoothly with any WooCommerce theme.
5. SearchWP
SearchWP is a great site-wide search engine that will take WordPress search to the next level. It is designed to index all content types, including WooCommerce product fields, documents, categories, and metadata, and create highly applicable results.
With the simple user interface, you can assign search weights to customize the order of returned data. It plays nicely with popular builders and is perfect for stores with content-heavy blogs or documentation along with products.
Salient Features:
Complete content indexing: Searches WooCommerce products, pages, posts, and custom post types.
Customizable Search Weight: Customize the weight of search results for specific regions like title, SKU, or description.
Document Search Support: Searchable documents, including PDFs, are indexed too; excellent for stores with downloadable manuals or documents.
6. FiboSearch – AJAX Search for WooCommerce
FiboSearch, previously AJAX Search for WooCommerce, is one of the most popular free search plugins in the WordPress ecosystem. It brings instant search, similar to Amazon, to your WooCommerce store with images, prices, and categories displayed in real-time.
FiboSearch indexes product attributes, variations, short descriptions, and SKUs so you’ll be ready for stores with detailed catalogs. The pro version offers mobile optimization and analytics.
Highlights of FiboSearch:
Instant product preview: Displays product images, prices, and categories while users type.
SKU and attribute search: Searches titles, descriptions, SKUs, and product attributes.
Mobile-optimized: Fast and responsive search regardless of device.
Theme Compatibility: Automatically works with most WooCommerce themes right away.
Multilingual Ready: Works with WPML and Polylang for multilingual stores/ WooCommerce stores.
7. ExpertRec Smart Search
ExpertRec is a cloud-based smart search plugin that works via an API integration to provide speed and fast and typo typo-tolerant results. It indexes all WooCommerce products, and because it processes everything on the cloud, the results are very light on your server.
It has voice search, autocomplete, and faceted filtering, and you can also visually edit your search bar and search results page.
ExpertRec is perfect for stores that have a lot of traffic, to have a scalable search without the performance loss.
Main Features of ExpertRec Smart Search:
Cloud Powered Speed: Provides fast, typo-tolerant search results by using cloud indexing to minimize server load.
AI Autocomplete: Makes intelligent suggestions using natural language processing and filters results.
Voice Search Support: Has built-in voice search support for improved assistance.
Faceted Filter: Allows users to apply filters by brand, price, or other product characteristics to reduce the number of search results.
Custom Design Capabilities: You receive a visual software editor to design the search UI without coding.
Conclusion:
After all, a search bar is the first thing a lot of customers will do in your store. So it is important. Whether you are looking for improved suggestions based on AI, advanced filtering options, or just a better version of the WooCommerce native search, the plugins above provide you with a wide range of options. Plugins like FiboSearch and YITH provide quick upgrades, while plugins like Doofinder and ExpertRec provide enterprise-level precision. Are you wanting to improve the UX and increase product discovery? The first step is to pick a WooCommerce search plugin that meets your catalog complexity and speed requirements and user expectations.