To enable product custom field search, navigate to Elevated › Product Search › Settings › Advanced Options. Under Search in Custom Fields, type a keyword to locate your custom field, select it from the list, then click Save Settings. The indexer automatically includes the product custom field data.
If you prefer to follow along visually, the video below shows the same steps from start to finish.
Navigate to Elevated › Product Search › Settings.
Locate the Advanced Options section on the left side of the page. Click Advanced Options to expand it.
The Search Scope panel appears at the top of the expanded section. Below it, look for the Search in Custom Fields section.
Click the input field under Search in Custom Fields.
Type a keyword related to the custom field you want to search. For example, if your field is named material, type “material”. Elevated Product Search displays all matching custom fields from your database.
Select the correct field from the list. It appears as a tag inside the input.
To add multiple fields, type another keyword and select additional fields from the list. To remove a field, click the X on the tag.
Click Save Settings at the top of the page.
The indexer automatically rebuilds to include the selected product custom field data. A success message appears indicating how many products were indexed.
Visit a page on your frontend where the search form is placed.
Search for a value stored in the product custom field you just added. For example, if you added a material field and assigned “Leather” to a product, type “Leather” into the search input.
Confirm that the correct product appears in the live dropdown results.
Custom fields store additional product data beyond WooCommerce’s default fields. If you use plugins such as Advanced Custom Fields, Meta Box, or JetEngine to add extra information to your products, Elevated Product Search can search that data alongside titles, descriptions, and SKUs.
The Search in Custom Fields selector queries your database for available meta keys. When you type a keyword, it returns all fields that match. You select the field by its stored name, not the admin label. This prevents errors from entering incorrect meta keys manually.
Once a field is selected and saved, the indexer extracts its text values during the rebuild process. The field data is stored in the search index alongside other enabled fields. This means customers can find products by searching terms that only exist in custom fields, without those words appearing anywhere else in the product title or description.
Use cases for custom field search include:
Custom field search only works with fields that contain text or string values. Fields storing arrays, objects, or image references cannot be indexed for text search. If a field is empty for a given product, that product will not appear in the results for that field.
The product custom field does not appear in the list
The field must exist in your database before Elevated Product Search can find it. Make sure at least one product has a value saved for that custom field. Fields that exist only as definitions but have never been populated on a product may not appear. Add a test value to a product and return to the settings to search again.
Product Search returns no results for a custom field value
Verify you selected the correct field from the list. Confirm the product you are testing has a value entered in that field. If you recently added the field, click Force Index Rebuild in the Indexer section and test again.
Wrong products appear for custom field searches
If multiple custom fields have similar names, you may have selected the wrong one. Remove the field from the Search in Custom Fields input, search again using a more specific keyword, and select the correct field.
WooCommerce Product Search Results are inconsistent
Check whether the custom field contains identical values across many products. If a field such as “Brand” contains the same value for most of your catalog, searching that term will return a large number of results.
