Smart Search AI
Smart Search AI brings intent-driven search to WordPress. It combines traditional full-text search with semantic understanding to interpret user intent, and runs on dedicated infrastructure, so you can build advanced search experiences on any host.
Configure Search Behavior
Section titled “Configure Search Behavior”Use the WordPress dashboard to adjust how Smart Search AI matches content across full-text, semantic, and hybrid models.
- AI-Powered Hybrid Search: Combines traditional full-text exact matching with semantic vector intelligence. Use an intuitive balance slider to adjust the exact ratio between keyword matching and semantic context.
- Stemming & Fuzzy Search: Select Stemming to reduce search terms to their root forms or Fuzzy Search to handle typos and minor spelling variations automatically.
- Semantic Intent Processing: Analyzes words in context to infer user intent, surfacing relevant content even when search terms don’t match exact page text.
Customize Search Results
Section titled “Customize Search Results”Manually control search outputs to highlight priority content, manage promotions, and define term synonyms.
- Custom Search Results: Specify exact search terms in WordPress to override standard algorithmic results and return a manually curated set of pages or posts.
- Search Promotions: Pin key landing pages, products, or promotional content to the top of search result lists using a simple drag-and-drop interface.
- Synonyms Engine: Group equivalent keywords and acronyms (e.g., “jacket” and “coat”) so query terms resolve to unified content pools without requiring site content changes.
- Field Weighting & Prioritization: Assign custom priority weights to specific post titles, body content, taxonomies, and custom fields to ensure high-value data ranks highest.
Integrations
Section titled “Integrations”Extend Smart Search across your tech stack. Get native support for WordPress tools, connect custom APIs, or index external data sources. Indexing and queries run on dedicated infrastructure, reducing load on your WordPress server.
- Agnostic Hosting: Works with any WordPress installation and hosting provider.
- Native ACF & WooCommerce Support: Out-of-the-box compatibility with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF PRO) and native WooCommerce product schemas without manual data mapping.
- API-First (WPGraphQL & REST): Expose search results, filters, and facets programmatically across custom theme or headless frontend.
- External Data Indexing: Index content from external sources outside WordPress, such as custom APIs, databases, or third-party systems.
Advanced Features
Section titled “Advanced Features”- Faceted Filtering: Enable taxonomy filters (checkboxes or dropdowns) and numeric range sliders with auto-reloading search results.
- Multimodal & Asset Indexing Beta: Index text from PDF attachments and image metadata alongside posts and pages.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server Beta: Connect live site content directly to external AI agents (such as Claude or ChatGPT) as a real-time, context-aware knowledge base.
- Search Insights & Analytics: Access search query volume, popular terms, and zero-result queries directly from the WP Engine User Portal to continuously optimize synonyms and content strategy.
Related Content
Section titled “Related Content”Looking for support?
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