Title: Search engine
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Search engine

 *  [gate303](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gate303/)
 * (@gate303)
 * [19 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-engine-3/)
 * I really need to know ho I am supposed to get the search engine to only search(
   or at least prioritize) whole words.
 * When I (or my visitors) search for the word sea, they are probably not interested
   in “season” or “research”…
 * How do I fix this? Is there any plugin?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [Pizdin Dim](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pizdin_dim/)
 * (@pizdin_dim)
 * [19 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-engine-3/#post-397148)
 * Either way, you’ll have to hack the code.
 * If you wanted to change the default WP behaviour, changing around 10 lines in`/
   wp-includes/classes.php`, from line 434 onwards:
 * `
    if (!$q['sentence']) { $s_array = explode(' ',$q['s']); $q['search_terms']
   = $s_array; $search .= '((post_title LIKE \' '.$n.$s_array[0].$n.' \') OR (post_content
   LIKE \' '.$n.$s_array[0].$n.' \'))'; for ( $i = 1; $i < count($s_array); $i =
   $i + 1) { $search .= ' AND ((post_title LIKE \' '.$n.$s_array[$i].$n.' \') OR(
   post_content LIKE \' '.$n.$s_array[$i].$n.' \'))'; } $search .= ' OR (post_title
   LIKE \' '.$n.$q['s'].$n.' \') OR (post_content LIKE \' '.$n.$q['s'].$n.' \')';
   $search .= ')'; } else { $search = ' AND ((post_title LIKE \' '.$n.$q['s'].$n.'\')
   OR (post_content LIKE \' '.$n.$q['s'].$n.' \'))'; }
 * The only change is to surround the `$n` variable with spaces. Keep in mind this
   has a shortcoming: it will never match posts where that word is the first or 
   last one in the title or the content. And that’s the reason WP search works the
   way it currently does.
 * Something fancy like prioritising can’t be done without extensive hacking of 
   the code.
 *  [Pizdin Dim](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pizdin_dim/)
 * (@pizdin_dim)
 * [19 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-engine-3/#post-397149)
 * Actually, now that I think about it some more, an alternate strategy could be
   to use the “REGEXP” operator instead of “LIKE”, which when combined with a concept
   known as “word boundaries”, could give you what you’re after. So the same 10 
   lines of code would now look like this:
 * `
    if (!$q['sentence']) { $s_array = explode(' ', $q['s']); $q['search_terms']
   = $s_array; $search .= '((post_title REGEXP \'[[:<:]]' . $s_array[0] . '[[:>:]]\')
   OR (post_content REGEXP \'[[:<:]]' . $s_array[0] . '[[:>:]]\'))'; for ($i = 1;
   $i < count($s_array); $i = $i + 1) { $search .= ' AND ((post_title REGEXP \'[[:
   <:]]' . $s_array[$i] . '[[:>:]]\') OR (post_content REGEXP \'[[:<:]]' . $s_array[
   $i] . '[[:>:]]\'))'; } $search .= ' OR (post_title REGEXP \'[[:<:]]' . $q['s'].'[[:
   >:]]\') OR (post_content REGEXP \'[[:<:]]' . $q['s'] . '[[:>:]]\')'; $search .
   = ')'; } else { $search = ' AND ((post_title REGEXP \'[[:<:]]' . $q['s'] . '[[:
   >:]]\') OR (post_content REGEXP \'[[:<:]]' . $q['s'] . '[[:>:]]\'))'; }
 * For more info, see the [regular expressions](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/regexp.html)
   page in the MySQL manual. Just keep in mind that regular expressions are “more
   expensive”, so if your site is very busy, it may not be worth it.
 * P.S. My apologies to the board moderators who won’t be pleased with me copying
   lots of code here.
 *  [taksmith](https://wordpress.org/support/users/taksmith/)
 * (@taksmith)
 * [19 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-engine-3/#post-397215)
 * I had the same problem and got into real trouble editing the classes.php code
   with unclosed brackets appearing in the sql SELECT string. But, if all you want
   to do is seacrch for complete strings (in my case I wanted people’s names – so
   didn’t want to find all “fred” or “bloggs” – just “fred bloggs” then add the 
   following to the searchform.php form
 * <input type=”hidden” value=”1″ name=”sentence” id=”sentence” />
 * Then it doesn’t break up the search string. If I was really clever and needed
   it I’m sure you could make this a checkbox to at least allow the option

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Search engine’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [engine](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/engine/)

 * 3 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [taksmith](https://wordpress.org/support/users/taksmith/)
 * Last activity: [19 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-engine-3/#post-397215)
 * Status: not resolved

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