Description
Requires WooCommerce 8.0 or later.
Inference Search replaces the theme’s search field with a full-screen search overlay. Customers see popular searches and recommended products before typing, and matching products while they type.
The search index is a set of tables in your own WordPress database. No search query, product or visitor data is sent to any external service.
Search that understands customers
- Typos: “pomap” finds “pompa”, and the overlay asks “Did you mean: pompa”.
- Polish word forms: “pompy”, “pompą” and “pompa” find the same products.
- Missing diacritics: “sol” finds “sól”.
- Synonyms: one line such as
skimmer, protein skimmermakes both names find the same products. - SKU: an exact SKU puts that product first.
- Ranking: name matches rank above category matches. Products in stock and better sellers rank higher, and out-of-stock products go last (configurable).
The overlay
- Popular searches and recommended products before typing: bestsellers, biggest discounts, newest or products you pick.
- Category suggestions while typing.
- Filters by category, price and availability, with the number of products for each value. They load only when a customer opens them, and “See all results” keeps them.
- Full-screen layout on phones, where the back button closes the overlay.
- Keyboard navigation, focus trap and screen reader announcements.
- The page’s own load is not slowed down: one small deferred script is loaded on every page, and the overlay’s stylesheet and data load only when a visitor moves to the search field.
- Optional voice search in browsers that support speech recognition.
- Accent color and CSS variables to match the theme.
Results page
“See all results” and Enter open the normal WooCommerce search results page, ranked by the same engine. The theme’s template, filters, sorting and pagination keep working.
Search insights
- Top searches of the last 30 days.
- Searches with no results, showing what customers look for and do not find.
- Click-through rate.
- Hiding a query from popular searches.
- CSV export.
Block and shortcode
The “Product search” block and the [inference_search] shortcode add a search button that opens the overlay. Existing theme search fields are taken over automatically.
Screenshots
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Product search A search field that opens the Inference Search overlay.
Installation
- Install and activate WooCommerce.
- Install and activate Inference Search for WooCommerce.
- The search index is built in the background right after activation. You can follow it under Inference Works Search Index. Later product changes are indexed automatically.
- Open your shop and click the search field.
The background jobs use Action Scheduler, which comes with WooCommerce. On sites where WP-Cron does not run, use wp infs reindex instead.
FAQ
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Does it send my data anywhere?
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No. Indexing, searching and statistics run in your WordPress database and are never sent anywhere.
The WordPress.org Free edition does not include the Freemius SDK and does not send site or administrator data to Freemius. The separately distributed Pro edition uses Freemius for licensing and updates; its opt-in screen explains the data involved and links to the Freemius privacy policy.
Inference Works publishes its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. These documents include the terms and privacy information applicable to Inference Works plugins.
Another exception is voice search, which is off by default. When you turn it on, speech is recognized by the visitor’s browser. Some browsers, for example Chrome, send the recording to their maker’s servers to do that. The plugin itself never receives or stores audio.
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Is there a Pro version?
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Yes. Inference Search Pro adds merchandising rules per search phrase, a revenue from search report, a weekly report email with synonym suggestions, and more filters (attributes, brands, tags, stock statuses). The free version is complete and does not need it. The “Pro” tab on the plugin’s page describes it.
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What is stored about visitors?
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Only anonymous counters per search phrase: how many times it was searched, how many times it found nothing and how many result clicks it got. No IP addresses, user accounts or sessions are stored. For rate limiting, a salted hash of the visitor’s IP address is kept in a transient for one minute. Daily figures are deleted after 90 days.
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My theme’s search field is not taken over.
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Add its CSS selector under Settings Search fields Additional fields. The fields
input[name="s"],.search-fieldand.woocommerce-product-search inputare always included. Any element with thedata-infs-openattribute opens the overlay. Adddata-infs-ignoreto a field or one of its parents to keep it out. -
How do I change the look?
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Pick the accent color in the settings. The theme can also set the CSS variables
--infs-accent,--infs-radius,--infs-font,--infs-bg,--infs-text,--infs-muted,--infs-border,--infs-hoverand--infs-sale. -
Does it work with page caching?
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Yes. The search endpoints are public REST routes without nonces, so cached pages keep working. Their responses are cached for 10 minutes and invalidated when products or settings change.
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Is my shop behind a proxy such as Cloudflare?
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The statistics endpoint limits each visitor to 60 events per minute by IP address. Behind a proxy that hides visitor IPs, use the
infs_log_clientfilter to read the trusted header. -
Is there a WP-CLI command?
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wp infs reindex,
wp infs reindex --async,wp infs statusandwp infs index <product-id>....
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Inference Search for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Inference Search for WooCommerce” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
0.3.4
- Enqueue result-page banner styles through the WordPress stylesheet API.
- Use translate.wordpress.org in the WordPress.org Free build; bundled Polish translations remain in the separately distributed Pro build.
0.3.3
- Align all PHP and block translations with the final inference-search-for-woocommerce slug.
- Match the source ZIP folder, SDK slug and translation file names to the Freemius Free package.
0.3.2
- Align the Freemius integration with the product snippet and keep the Free slug inference-search.
- Correct the premium slug to inference-search-for-woocommerce-pro.
0.3.1
- Preserve the original order of tied synonym suggestions on PHP 7.4 (Pro).
- Include compatibility verification for legacy orders and HPOS.
0.3.0
- Filters in the overlay: category, price and availability (can be turned off in the settings).
- The WordPress.org Free package has no third-party updater or Freemius SDK. The separately distributed Pro edition uses Freemius for licensing and updates.
- Developers: the
infs_search_resultsfilter changes the results of the overlay and the results page in one place, and can add a banner or a redirect to a page of the site.infs_admin_tabsadds tabs to the Search screen,infs_insights_tabadds a section to the top of the Insights tab, andinfs_synonyms_tabbelow the synonyms editor.infs_facetsadds filters (any product taxonomy throughTaxonomyFacet).infs_enginereplaces the search engine with anotherEngineInterface.
0.2.2
- The accent color is also used for highlighted search words, carousel arrows, the carousel scrollbar and hovered cards and suggestions.
0.2.1
- Saving settings clears common page caches, so the overlay picks up changes such as the accent color.
- Database queries use identifier placeholders (Plugin Check).
0.2.0
- Live search overlay for desktop and phones.
- Search engine with typo tolerance, Polish word forms, synonyms and SKU matching.
- WooCommerce search results page ranked by the same engine.
- Anonymous search statistics with CSV export.
- Settings, synonyms editor, voice search, “Product search” block.
- Polish translation.
0.1.1
- Shared Inference Works admin menu.