{"id":64366,"date":"2011-12-03T08:45:45","date_gmt":"2011-12-03T13:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wpmu.org\/?p=64366"},"modified":"2022-03-02T05:30:57","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T05:30:57","slug":"daily-tip-search-wordpress-blogs-with-ease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/daily-tip-search-wordpress-blogs-with-ease\/","title":{"rendered":"Search WordPress Blogs With Ease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever come across a popular WordPress blog that still uses the standard WordPress search widget? If you have, then you have no doubt been frustrated by the results<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Google
Seriously – it’s *nearly* as bad as this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For those of you who don’t know, the standard search widget in WordPress returns any post that features your keyword, in reverse chronological order<\/strong>. It also displays the first 55 words in the post, as opposed to an excerpt highlighting the term you are searching for.<\/p>\n

If you are trying to find something specific that was published a year ago, you may have to trawl through pages of results before you find what you want<\/strong> – despite it being the most relevant result. And if you are simply entering a search term in the hope that you will be presented with the most relevant content, you’re out of luck.<\/p>\n

Google To The Rescue<\/h2>\n

Luckily, there is a very simple way of getting around this<\/strong> – our old friend Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Simply head over to everyone’s favorite search engine and type the following into the search box:<\/p>\n

inurl:http:\/\/www.theblog.com\/ + search term<\/p>\n

Let me give you an example of this in action. I am a big fan of the Smart Passive Income<\/a> blog, and the fact that such a popular blog still uses the standard WordPress search widget is a bit\u00a0gob-smacking. Seriously – consider my gob well and truly smacked.<\/p>\n\n

Pat (the owner of the blog) published an extremely<\/strong>\u00a0popular post about a year ago: THE Backlinking Strategy That Works<\/a>. If all were good in the world, a search on the term “backlinking” in his blog would return that post near to or at the top of the results. Let’s see:<\/p>\n

\"Backlinking\"Not in the top 3 results. Not on the first page actually.<\/strong> I eventually found it half way down page 4.<\/strong> Not only that, the top three results have very little to teach you about backlinking<\/strong>.\u00a0In terms of increasing engagement by returning relevant search results, this blog is failing in a big way<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Now let’s use our clever little search query in Google to see what we get.<\/p>\n

inurl:http:\/\/www.smartpassiveincome.com\/ + backlinking<\/p>\n

\"BacklinkingTa da! What I<\/em> would consider the most relevant result is second<\/strong> in Google’s rankings.<\/p>\n

This method is obviously also great if a blog doesn’t have a search box at all (I’m looking at you, Social Triggers<\/a>).<\/p>\n

What About YOUR Blog’s Search?<\/h2>\n

Are you still using the dreaded standard WordPress search? It’s time for a change! Stay tuned for an in-depth guide on your best options.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Creative commons image courtesy of dullhunk<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you fed up with WordPress blogs returning rubbish search results? Here’s the solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84405,"featured_media":206209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"blog_reading_time":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_tutorials_categories":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[639,186,52],"tutorials_categories":[],"class_list":["post-64366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tutorials","tag-blogging","tag-search","tag-widgets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204349,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64366\/revisions\/204349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64366"},{"taxonomy":"tutorials_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tutorials_categories?post=64366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}