Putting the ID for a category into the ‘Exclude Categories’ area of ‘Search Engine Advanced Configuration’ seems to be exclude more than just the category entered. Seems to inhibit a lot of search functions.

Current workaround by putting individual post IDs into ‘Exclude some post or page IDs’ – this does appear to work – but being able to exclude categories was a useful feature.

Just me or replicable elsewhere?

https://wordpress.org/plugins/search-everything/