Wordpress Faceted Search

Faceted search, made popular by sites like Amazon.com and eBay.com, is and tried and true method of easily getting users directly to the content they need by giving them a sidebar full of separate “facets” to narrow their search by. This strategy delivers strong results for eCommerce sites, but it can be used for organizing any type of content. This post deals with adding a Wordpress faceted search and will discuss two ways of doing it.

1. Plugin method: If you want a quick solution then this is the way to go.
2. Adding code method: It gives more control but is preferred if the first method doesn’t give the expected results.

Create a Faceted Search for WordPress

Plugin Method to add Faceted Search

With the help of this Wordpress faceted search plugin, the product search results within your store will be as relevant as possible for your potential customers. It is easy to set up and is highly customizable.

1. Install WP fastest site search plugin from WordPress plugin store.
2. Go to https://cse.expertrec.com/newuser?platform=wordpress.
3. Enter your WordPress website URL and click on next->
4. The crawl will start in the background.
5. Login to your WordPress admin panel.
6. In your left panel you must be able to see ExpertRec’s WordPress plugin, click on that. 
7. Get your site ID (or) API key from your ExpertRec control panel ( here ).
8. Copy-paste your site id in your WordPress control panel and click on save changes.
9. Make sure you have upgraded to a paid plan before 15 days of the free trial. (Price begins at 9 USD per month)
10. That’s it! Your brand new WordPress search box is up and running!

Non-plugin Method

Here we will visit the steps required to add the ExpertRec WordPress faceted search box to your website. This is one of the easiest setup processes of all the available options out there and is highly recommended.

1. Navigate to https://cse.expertrec.com/newuser?platform=cse and signup with your Google ID.
2. Enter your website’s URL when prompted. You can select a server location near you and add the URL of your sitemap if you wish to. These will be auto-detected otherwise.
3. You can play around with the settings and customize the UI as the crawl runs. Once it is complete, you can check out a fully functional demo before taking the search to your website.
4. You can take the search to your website with little to no effort. All you need to do is to paste the code snippet available on the dashboard on your website.

Create a Faceted Search for WordPress

ExpertRec comes with more customization options that you can explore. You can read this article to find a more detailed guide on the installation and this article on Wordpress faceted search configuration to customize the facets further.