WordPress.com announced an intriguing new premium search option for its Cloud Hosting customers today, dubbed VIP Search. It uses elasticsearch software that’s “hosted, managed, and supported by the WordPress.com VIP team.”
Enabling VIP Search will make your search results more relevant from the start, with the ability to filter results by type of content, category, tag, author, date ranges, and more. VIP Search also allows for developer customization to seriously customize results.
I think the built-in search functionality in WordPress is great, but being able to deeply customize your search and filter by more than just keyword is a huge win.
Enhancing discoverability on sites with a lot of information is key, and this will allow owners of sites like that to assist their users in finding relevant information in a timely manner, rather than simply paging through endless posts and pages. What I like most is that it even looks great!
There are other options available for those users not using WordPress.com’s VIP service. Many sites take advantage of Google Custom Search (including this site) which harnesses the power of Google to create a custom engine for your site. There are also quite a few other search plugins available for WordPress that offer some of the same functionality.
Search in general is becoming more important for today’s web. There is so much content being created every day that it’s impossible to organically find it all, often you need to search based on some set of information you know to find what you’re looking for. It’s great to see companies experimenting with different ways to search, it’s a win-win for all of us.
You can check it out at vip.wordpress.com or see it in action on the Kaiser Family Foundation’s website.
5 Comments