Elevated Site Search replaces the results of the default WordPress search automatically: activate the plugin and every existing search form on your site starts returning typo-tolerant, relevance-ranked results from the search index. There is no setting to switch on. This page shows how to verify it and explains exactly what changes.

Table of Contents

• Step 1: Activate the Plugin and Let the Index Build
• Step 2: Search Your Site the Way a Visitor Would
• How the Replacement Works
• Troubleshooting

Step 1: Activate the Plugin and Let the Index Build

Install and activate Elevated Site Search (see Installing & Activating). Activation schedules the first index build automatically; on most sites it finishes within a minute or two.

You can watch the build under Elevated › Site Search › Settings › Advanced Options › Indexer.

Step 2: Search Your Site the Way a Visitor Would

Use any search form your site already has, or open yoursite.com/?s=denim directly, and misspell the word on purpose: search for denmi instead of denim.

The results page returns the right content anyway. Results come from the search index, ranked by relevance instead of publish date.

How the Replacement Works

When a visitor submits a search, Elevated Site Search intercepts the main WordPress search query and answers it from its own index: the same index, scope, and fuzzy matching the instant search box uses. Your theme keeps rendering the results page; only the list of results changes.

• Typo tolerance. Misspelled queries match the intended words, at the strictness set under Fuzzy Matching in the settings.
• Relevance ranking. Results are ordered by how well they match, not by date.
• Same scope as the search box. Only the post types you index appear; posts and pages are indexed by default.
• Match highlighting in excerpts. When your theme renders excerpts through the standard WordPress excerpt filters, matched terms are wrapped in a highlight. Builder templates that render excerpts through their own dynamic fields bypass those filters and show plain excerpts.

Searches that return nothing produce a normal “no results” page from your theme.

Troubleshooting

Search results look unchanged. The index may still be building. Check Elevated › Site Search › Settings › Advanced Options › Indexer, and rebuild it from there if it is empty.

A post never shows up in results. Its post type is not in the search scope. Add the post type under Settings › Advanced Options › Content to Index; the index rebuilds automatically when the scope changes.

The results page title shows an empty search term. This is a known issue in the current release: the page works, but templates that echo the searched phrase render it empty. It is tracked and will be fixed in an update.