Super-charged WordPress search with faceting, powered by ElasticSearch.
The WordPress.com VIP Search Add-On is a service which was purpose-built to supercharge search for WordPress sites. Improve the relevance and quality of your search results with the WordPress.com VIP Search Add-On powered by ElasticSearch technology.
Pricing
For WordPress.com VIP Cloud Hosting customers, the initial setup of VIP Search is $2500, which includes the initial site indexing, and then VIP Search is $1199 per month. Current WordPress.com VIP Cloud Hosting clients can get started with VIP Search by getting in touch or by sending in a VIP Support ticket.
VIP Search is not available for self-hosted VIPs yet, but if you’re a self-hosted VIP who wants to enable VIP Search on your site, get in touch and let us know.
Documentation
Activate and Go!
Configuration is as simple as activating the plugin via the WordPress.com VIP Dashboard. After your site index is configured, your search results will be automatically filtered to deliver ElasticSearch goodness. Search results are provided by ElasticSearch which is doing complicated stuff in order to get the results, much more than would be possible via MySQL.
Define custom filters and facets
You know your site’s content best, so you can define facets which are most relevant to your content, and then add the optional sidebar widget so viewers can easily narrow down to the exact result they want. Some popular custom facets are tags and categories, post type, and date posted.
Here’s an example of the facets powering the WordPress.com VIP site’s search:
// Sets ElasticSearch facets
add_action( 'after_setup_theme', function() {
if ( ! function_exists( 'WPCOM_elasticsearch' ) )
return;
WPCOM_elasticsearch()->set_facets( array(
'Content Type' => array(
'type' => 'post_type',
'count' => 10,
),
'Categories' => array(
'type' => 'taxonomy',
'taxonomy' => 'category',
'count' => 10,
),
'Tags' => array(
'type' => 'taxonomy',
'taxonomy' => 'post_tag',
'count' => 10,
),
'Year' => array(
'type' => 'date_histogram',
'field' => 'post_date',
'interval' => 'year',
'count' => 10,
),
'Month' => array(
'type' => 'date_histogram',
'field' => 'post_date',
'interval' => 'month',
'count' => 10,
),
) );
});
See VIP Search in action
Try it out on this site, and take a closer look at Kaiser Family Foundation (below) which is using VIP Search on their site.
On the VIP site, a search for “code” gives a lot of results across many types of content – posts, pages, news, plugins, and documentation:
We drill down further into the “News” results:
And more particularly, news about code tagged “government.” Now we can delve into how NASA is using WordPress!
On the Kaiser Family Foundation site, VIP Search is integrated into their site like any normal search.
Searching for something simple like “healthcare” brings up an initial set of results on the search page. Filters and additional refining tools are in the sidebar widget next to the results.
Users can refine results by selecting topics, tags, dates, and other filters specified by the KFF site. Here, additional topics of “health costs” “health reform” and a “coverage” tag are selected.
Results are displayed in a list or grid (below) format, which can put further emphasis on visuals and featured images.
Visit the Kaiser Family Foundation website to see VIP Search in action!
If you’re interested in using the VIP Search plugin or learning more, please get in touch.
