Description
SEOmedSEB Smart Search for WooCommerce is a fast, self-hosted AJAX search plugin for WooCommerce stores, focused on two things:
- Deep, code-free design customization. The Design tab exposes colors, typography, spacing, border radius, and several built-in style presets (minimal, command palette, glassmorphism, sharp, rounded) as CSS variables, with a live preview.
- A relevance engine with typo tolerance built in. Search runs against a dedicated, optimized index table (not the slow default WordPress search), with fuzzy/SOUNDEX fallback matching so misspelled searches still find the right product.
Every feature in this plugin — including the search engine, the full Design tab, analytics, and the indexer — is free. There is no “Pro” upsell built into this version.
Key features
- Custom, optimized search index (own DB table, not
wp_postsLIKEqueries) - AJAX autocomplete with grouped results: products, categories, tags, posts, pages
- Product detail panel on hover — add to cart without leaving the search results
- Typo-tolerant search (fuzzy/SOUNDEX fallback + “did you mean” suggestions)
- Synonyms, and exclude/include filter rules by category, tag, or product
- Full search-scope control (description, short description, SKU, attributes, categories, tags, custom fields)
- Deep design customization: colors, typography, spacing, radius, style presets, dark mode
- Animated (“typewriter”) placeholder with a configurable phrase list and speed
- ⌘K / Ctrl+K global search shortcut
- Mobile overlay mode with configurable breakpoint
- Client-side “recent searches” history
- Search analytics: critical (zero-result) search phrases report + dashboard widget
- Scheduled + on-demand index rebuilding, with live progress in the admin
Adding the search bar to your theme
- Shortcode:
[smart_search_bar] - Widget: Appearance Widgets “Smart Search bar”
- PHP:
<?php echo do_shortcode( '[smart_search_bar]' ); ?>
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Smart Search bar
Installation
- Upload the
seomedseb-smart-searchfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install the zip via Plugins Add New Upload Plugin. - Activate the plugin. WooCommerce must already be installed and active.
- The plugin will automatically build its search index in the background. Check progress under WooCommerce Smart Search Indexer.
- Add
[smart_search_bar]wherever you want the search bar to appear, or use the widget.
FAQ
-
Does this require WooCommerce?
-
Yes, WooCommerce must be installed and active.
-
Is this really free?
-
Yes. Every feature described above is included at no cost. A future paid tier may exist someday, but it is a separate, later decision and does not affect this version.
-
Does it work with variable products?
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Yes, and you choose how. Under Search config Product variations you can show only the parent product (variation SKUs still match it), give each variation its own result row with its own price, stock and image, or list the matching variations underneath their parent.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“SEOmedSEB Smart Search for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “SEOmedSEB Smart 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
0.18.29
- Changed: with “All variation SKUs” display, a product with many variations no longer lists every code. The results list shows the first 3 and the details panel the first 6, followed by “+N more”; codes matching the search come first, so a searched variant SKU is always visible and highlighted. The “+N more” text can be edited under Texts.
0.18.28
- Fixed: variable products with many variations could be missing from search entirely — not findable by name or by any variation SKU. A product’s index row holds every variation’s SKU, and with many variations that passed the 191-character limit of the SKU column, so the row was never saved. The column is now TEXT; updating converts it automatically and rebuilds the index.
0.18.27
- Fixed: in the full-screen mobile overlay, the results panel always stretched to the bottom of the screen while the list inside stayed capped at 70% of the screen height, leaving an empty white area under the results on tall phones. The panel now fits its content and only fills the screen (with the list scrolling) when there are more results than fit.
0.18.26
- Fixed: on desktop, the results panel could open over the logo instead of under the search bar. It was anchored to the bar’s right edge and grew leftwards, and its “keep on screen” correction measured from the search bar instead of the screen edge, so it only looked right by coincidence. The panel now starts at the search bar’s left edge and only shifts left when it would otherwise run past the right edge of the screen.
0.18.25
- Added: the Indexing tab now shows when the scheduled reindex will next run, and warns when WordPress’s scheduled tasks (WP-Cron) aren’t running on the site — e.g. DISABLE_WP_CRON is set but no server cron job calls wp-cron.php — which otherwise silently stops scheduled indexing.
- Fixed: a few newer admin texts (such as “Last run”) showed in English in the Danish and German translations.
0.18.24
- Changed: the plugin’s display name is now written “SEOmedSEB Smart Search for WooCommerce”, matching the author name. Only the capitalisation changed — the plugin slug, settings, search index and translations are unaffected.
0.18.23
- Fixed: with a page-speed plugin that delays JavaScript (NitroPack, WP Rocket “delay JS” and similar), the search bar could be initialised twice for logged-out visitors — every search was sent twice and the quantity +/- buttons changed the amount by 2. Initialisation is now safe to run more than once.
- Fixed: “Add to cart” from the results panel now uses WooCommerce’s own add-to-cart request and passes the refreshed cart fragments on, so the header mini-cart and cart drawers (e.g. FunnelKit) update immediately. Previously they often didn’t update for logged-out visitors, so the first click looked like it did nothing.
0.18.22
- Fixed: the recurring reindex (“Planlægning af indeksering”) could fire hours away from the time shown in the admin — it computed “3:00” using PHP’s own server-default timezone instead of the site’s actual timezone (Settings General), so on hosts where those two differ, “daily at 03:00” could silently run in the evening of the previous day instead. It now uses the site’s configured timezone, and updating to this version automatically reschedules the existing job so the fix takes effect without needing to resave the Indexing tab.
0.18.21
- Removed: 0.18.20’s sticky-header/mobile-overlay z-index fix (boostAncestorStacking) has been removed. It worked and was generic, but the sticky header feature it compensated for has since been turned off on the sites that needed it, so the code is removed rather than left running for nothing. No user-facing change if you don’t use a sticky header; see changelog-full.txt if this needs to be reinstated later.
Earlier versions
The full changelog back to the 0.1.0 initial release (0.18.20 through 0.1.0) is kept in changelog-full.txt in the plugin’s own folder, and in the version history on this plugin’s SVN repository — trimmed here so this section stays under WordPress.org’s 5000-character display limit for the Changelog tab.