A great search tool is an essential element of a fantastic customer experience for any e-commerce store. Plus, as customers are two times more likely to make a purchase online after searching on a retailer’s website, providing a modern search experience could even help you increase your store’s revenue.

The default search functionality included with WooCommerce works, but enhancing the experience for customers can help boost your reputation and set you apart from competitors. Thankfully, a WooCommerce search plugin can make it easy to upgrade search for faster, more accurate, and more intuitive results.

With so many WooCommerce search plugins available, finding the best one for your store can be confusing. So, we’ve put together this handy guide. Read on to explore the features you should be looking for in a WooCommerce product search plugin, and then discover our reviews of six of the best options.

What to look for in a WooCommerce search plugin

Some of the most important features to look for when deciding on the best WooCommerce product search plugin for your site include:

Instant search results

It’s important that your WooCommerce product search plugin responds quickly to your customers’ search queries so that they can easily find the products they need.

Some plugins, such as Jetpack Search, give instant results, which means your customers start seeing the products that match their query as soon as they start typing.

Accurate results

One of the main things to consider when choosing a WooCommerce search plugin is the accuracy of its product results. This will depend on two main factors:

1. The plugin’s index. While the standard WordPress and WooCommerce search function works by querying your database each time a user searches, specialized plugins build their own index of your site. This means that the accuracy of this index determines how accurate your customer’s search results are. You should also make sure your customers can always discover your latest products by ensuring it automatically updates every time you add new products or pages to your store.
2. The plugin’s algorithm. The algorithm used by your search plugin affects the results that it returns for visitors’ search queries. You should look for a WooCommerce product search plugin that allows you to customize its algorithm to meet the needs of your store. For example, you may decide that the plugin should give priority placement to products you currently have on sale or that you’ve recently added to your site.

It’s also important that your product search delivers accurate results for complex searches. For example, Jetpack Search can instantly respond to complex, multi-faceted searches, such as ‘men’s xl blue shirt,’ which helps your customers find the product they need without needing to refine or filter their query.

Autocorrect

Around one in ten search queries are misspelled, but the great news is that some of the leading WooCommerce search plugins, such as Jetpack Search, feature powerful autocorrect features. This means that a typo won’t get in the way of your customers finding the product they’re looking for.

Responsive design

Over 40% of e-commerce sales take place on a mobile device. So, it’s vital that your website is responsive and delivers an excellent customer experience regardless of the size of their screen. The same is true for your WooCommerce product search plugin — it should display results in a way that looks great on both small and large screens.

Filter options

Filters can help visitors narrow their search results to find the product they’re looking for. You should seek a WooCommerce search plugin that allows your customers to filter their search results by your product categories, tags, and attributes. It’s also important to ensure your plugin quickly applies these filters without needing to reload the page, so visitors enjoy a seamless search experience.

Foreign language support

If your store has different language options for your customers, then it’s also important that your search plugin works regardless of the language your customer uses. Some plugins offer support for a wide range of languages — for example, Jetpack Search provides comprehensive support for 38 popular languages, ranging from Arabic to Ukrainian, meaning all your customers can get instant search results and find the right product for them.

A review of the best product search plugins for WooCommerce

How do you find the best WooCommerce search plugin for your store? To help, we’ve looked at the top options and carefully compared them based on their features, pros and cons, ease of use, and pricing.

1. Jetpack Search

Jetpack Search is one of the best WooCommerce search plugins available. It offers a wide range of advanced tools designed specifically for WordPress and WooCommerce to help your customers quickly find the right product for them. Thanks to its instant search functionality, the plugin displays results as soon as a customer begins to type, eliminating the need to wait for results to load.

Jetpack Search was made by the experts at Automattic — the same people behind WooCommerce and WordPress.com. This means it integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce and automatically indexes a wide range of product data, including attributes, variants, descriptions, tags, and categories.

Jetpack Search also fully supports faceted searches, which help your customers find the right product without refining or rephrasing their search. For example, a search for “blue size 8 maxi dress under $150” will prioritize results for maxi dresses with a product color attribute of blue that are available in size 8 and that have a price under $150.

The plugin has a wide range of features and options to provide a great search experience for your customers that blends perfectly with your site design — for example, choosing to display your results in an attractive grid layout with product pictures. The plugin also offers instant autocorrect, so a rogue typo or spelling mistakes won’t prevent your customers from finding the products they’re looking for.

Jetpack Search uses Automattic’s powerful cloud servers to index your site and conduct searches, which means it can deliver lightning-fast search speed regardless of the size of your store. And this is all without placing strain on your servers or slowing down your site. Automattic’s servers automatically index new products, so they’re discoverable within minutes of being added to your store.

Features of Jetpack Search:

• Instant product search without reloading the page
• Instant filtering by a wide range of product attributes
• Support for faceted search queries
• Infinite scroll, which automatically loads more search results
• Autocorrect
• Advanced ranking algorithms to deliver highly-relevant results
• Prioritization of results based on your store’s most popular products
• Advanced customization options
• Integration with Jetpack Stats to help you see what products visitors are searching for
• Super fast indexing, so your search index will update within minutes of adding a product to your site
• Support for over 38 different languages

Pros of Jetpack Search:

• Jetpack Search offers instant search, which means your customers can quickly find the product they’re looking for without waiting for a results page to load.
• The plugin supports complex, faceted search queries, alongside instant filtering by product attributes, which makes it easy for your customers to refine their searches.
• Jetpack Search can deliver highly accurate search results in a wide range of languages without needing an additional plugin.
• The plugin also works perfectly with other content on your WordPress site, enabling your customers to easily find relevant blog articles or support pages.
• Jetpack Search is a cloud-based service that uses Automattic’s speedy servers to index your site and deliver search results, which reduces the impact on your server.

Cons of Jetpack Search:

• Visitors cannot add items to their cart directly from their search results.

Who is Jetpack Search most suitable for?

Jetpack Search is one of the best WooCommerce search plugins and is an ideal solution for any WooCommerce store owner who wants to offer a best-in-class search experience to their customers.

Ease of use

Jetpack Search is simple to install. It will automatically replace the default WordPress search function and will get straight to work indexing your store. While this WooCommerce search plugin offers powerful customization options, they’re easy to understand and detailed documentation is available. Jetpack’s team of Happiness Engineers is also on hand to provide email support.

Pricing

Jetpack Search is available free of charge for three months. It then costs $8.25 per 10,000 records or search requests a month.

2. YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search

YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search is an advanced product search plugin from YITH, one of the leading producers of WooCommerce plugins. It adds Ajax-powered live search with autocomplete to your store, allowing customers to find the perfect product for them as soon as they start typing their query.

The plugin’s premium version adds many additional features, including indexing a wider range of product data, such as product excerpts, descriptions, and SKUs. It also allows you to show product images in your search results and provides instant filtering, so your customers can refine their search results to find the product they’re looking for.

Features of YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search:

• Ajax-powered live search
• Autocomplete
• The ability to show product images, descriptions, prices, and promotional banners in search results (premium only)
• Indexing of categories, SKUs, excerpts, tags, and site posts and pages (premium only)
• A customizable search box and results pages
• Automatic indexing for new products
• The ability to exclude out-of-stock products from search results (premium only)
• Foreign language support via WPML

Pros of YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search:

• The plugin enables your customers to get instant results for their search queries, and with the premium version, they can see results that include a wide range of product information and attributes.

Cons of YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search

• The plugin lacks some of the advanced features offered by other premium WooCommerce product search plugins, including autocorrect and support for faceted search.
• The plugin uses your site’s servers for indexing and processing search requests, which could impact your site’s speed and take up space on your server.

Who is YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search most suitable for?

Due to the comparatively limited feature set and the use of your own server space and bandwidth to perform searches, YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search is best suited to relatively small WooCommerce stores.

Ease of use

The plugin is easy to install and activate and automatically starts indexing your products. Documentation is provided, and email support is available for all premium subscribers.

Pricing

A free version of the plugin is available, which offers Ajax-powered search with autocomplete. The premium version unlocks all features for $65 a year.

3. WooCommerce Product Search 

WooCommerce Product Search is a search plugin developed by itthinx, who also produces a number of popular WooCommerce extensions. The plugin offers instant live search and provides a wide range of options to customize search results, including adjusting the weighting the algorithm places on different product categories or content types.

WooCommerce Product Search also provides advanced search statistics and business insights, allowing you to spot trends in your customers’ searches and discover opportunities for growth by reviewing search terms that didn’t generate any results. Your customers can also instantly filter their search results using intuitive icons, including filtering by color, category, and price.

Features of WooCommerce Product Search:

• Instant live search
• An add to cart option on both live search results and the search results page
• The ability to index a wide range of product data and attributes, including SKUs, price, categories, tags, and titles
• The ability to display product images in search results
• Instant filtering by product attribute, tags, categories, keywords, or price range
• Automatic integration with WooCommerce and many popular themes
• Search statistics and business insights
• A customizable algorithm and search weighting
• Automatic indexing of new products

Pros of WooCommerce Product Search:

• The plugin offers live search, which includes product images by default, and your customers can add products straight to their cart from the live search results.
• WooCommerce Product Search is compatible with many popular WooCommerce themes, which minimizes the need to make custom CSS changes.

Cons of WooCommerce Product Search:

• The plugin does not offer autocorrect or auto-complete.
• While search filters are offered, the plugin does not support faceted search requests.
• The plugin uses your server’s storage and resources to index your site and process search requests, which could cause issues if you have a large number of products or a basic hosting package.

Who is WooCommerce Product Search most suitable for?

As WooCommerce Product Search lacks some of the features offered in other premium search plugins, it’s most suited for small ecommerce store owners who want to improve their search function for a relatively low cost.

Ease of use

WooCommerce Product Search includes an automated setup wizard that integrates the plugin with your site and activates the most common features and settings. Detailed documentation is also provided alongside support from the developer through the WooCommerce helpdesk.

Pricing

WooCommerce Product Search costs $49 per year.

4. Doofinder

Doofinder is an ecommerce search provider that works with a wide range of platforms, including WooCommerce. It processes your visitors’ search requests on its own servers, which means that it can cope with a large volume of customers searching at the same time without slowing down your site.

Doofinder’s live search feature shows search results to your customers as soon as they start typing their results. Its natural language processing technology helps deliver relevant results to your customers by filtering out typos and considering a range of information like product titles, descriptions, and attributes. Doofinder also supports faceted searches and offers instant filtering, so your customers can refine their search results to find the product they’re looking for.

Features of Doofinder:

• Live search with autocomplete
• Integration with the native WordPress and WooCommerce search functions
• Faceted searches and instant filtering
• Support for over 30 languages
• Search logging and analytics
• Customizable results (Pro plan and above)
• Automatic indexing of new products
• Recommended products and product banners (Pro Plan and above)
• A hosted search solution
• Support for visual and voice search
• A customizable search box
• A fully responsive, mobile-friendly design

Pros of Doofinder:

• Doofinder offers a range of advanced features, including autocomplete and instant search, which helps create a seamless search experience for your customers.
• As Doofinder is a hosted service, indexing and processing search requests don’t use your server’s resources.

Cons of Doofinder:

• Doofinder has a high monthly cost, which varies based on the number of requests each month. Requests include indexing, as well as any searches. The instant search feature can also send multiple requests per search, making pricing unpredictable.

Who is Doofinder most suitable for?

Due to Doofinder’s relatively high cost, it’s best suited for large WooCommerce stores.

Ease of use

Doofinder’s WooCommerce search plugin simplifies the process of connecting your store to the Doofinder service. While most features can be accessed within the WooCommerce dashboard, some advanced features can only be accessed on Doofinder’s site. This may be confusing for some users. Doofinder has documentation available and email support is provided for all paid plans.

Pricing

Doofinder offers a free plan with limited features which supports up to 1,000 requests per month. The basic plan offers more features and costs $35 a month for up to 10,000 requests. The Pro plan unlocks more features and costs $59 a month for up to 10,000 requests.

5. Advanced Woo Search

Advanced Woo Search is a highly customizable WooCommerce product search plugin that aims to deliver the most relevant product search results to your customers. It uses an advanced search algorithm to index and search through a wide range of product information, including descriptions, titles, and variants. The plugin is created by a full-time WordPress and WooCommerce developer, and is designed to seamlessly integrate with many popular WooCommerce plugins.

The plugin uses Ajax to display visitors’ search results without them having to reload the page, and you can choose which elements are shown in your search results, including images and prices. In addition, the Pro version of the plugin unlocks additional features, including indexing product attributes, the ability to put an ‘add to cart’ button next to each search result, and instant results filtering, so your customers can refine their search results.

Features of Advanced Woo Search:

• Fully customizable search results, including adding product images and prices
• The ability to search across all product variations
• Options to exclude products, categories, or tags from search results
• The capability to search for synonyms and ignore stop words
• Search filters (Pro version only)
• The ability to extend the search index to include product attributes and custom fields (Pro version only)
• An add to cart button in search results (Pro version only)
• Google Analytics integration
• A range of ready-to-go search layouts and styles (Pro version only)
• Foreign language support through integrations with WPML, Polylang, qTranslate, and WooCommerce Multilingual

Pros of Advanced Woo Search:

• The plugin allows a high level of customization of how search results appear, so you can tailor it to display the information you want your visitors to see and match your site’s design.
• The plugin automatically searches for synonyms and ignores stop words, which helps make sure that relevant products are not unnecessarily excluded from search results.

Cons of Advanced Woo Search:

• The plugin doesn’t support faceted searches, so customers may have to refine their results using filters to find the right product for them.

Who is Advanced Woo Search most suitable for?

As it uses your site’s servers to carry out searches and index your site, Advanced Woo Search is best suited to small to medium-sized stores. The free version offers many useful features to enhance your site’s search experience, which may make it a good choice for stores with very limited budgets.

Ease of use

The plugin is easy to install and has been designed to automatically integrate with many popular WooCommerce themes. There’s detailed documentation available, and the plugin’s author regularly responds to support requests for free users via the plugin’s support forum. Email support is offered for users of the premium version.

Pricing

There’s a limited free version available on the WordPress plugin directory. The ‘Pro’ version unlocks all features and costs $69 a year for a single website.

6. Smart WooCommerce Search

Smart WooCommerce Search is a product search plugin that offers your customers an instant live search experience. The plugin, developed by a WordPress developer known as YummyWP, will automatically index your product descriptions, tags, categories, and SKUs.

Alongside adding images and prices to your search results, the plugin’s premium version allows your customers to add items to their cart straight from the search result. The premium version also supports the display of labels, which means you can clearly show customers which products are featured, on sale, or out of stock. It also aims to improve the relevancy of search results by extending the plugin’s index to include a wider range of data, including product attributes, variations, and custom fields.

Features of Smart WooCommerce Search:

• Instant live search
• The display of images and prices in results
• Indexing of product descriptions, categories, tags, and SKUs
• Exclusion of out of stock products from search results
• Compatible with a range of page builders, including Elementor, Visual Composer, and Divi
• The ability to extend the search index to include product attributes, variations, brands, and custom fields (pro only)
• Capability to searches for synonyms and ignore stop words (pro only)
• An add to cart button on search results (pro only)
• Foreign language support through integration with WPML and Polylang (pro only)

Pros of Smart WooCommerce Search:

• The plugin offers a simple way to add instant live search to your store, so customers don’t have to wait for a search results page to load to find the items they’re looking for.
• The plugin is compatible with a range of popular page builders.

Cons of Smart WooCommerce Search:

• The plugin lacks many features found in other WooCommerce product search plugins, such as filtering and faceted search support.
• While the synonyms feature can be used to enter commonly misspelled words and their correct spelling manually, there is no automatic autocorrect feature.
• The plugin doesn’t offer the ability to customize the search algorithm, meaning you can’t increase the weighting given to specific products, categories, or tags.
• The plugin uses your site’s server to index your site, which may mean it takes longer to return results for larger stores.

Who is Smart WooCommerce Search most suitable for?

Smart WooCommerce Search is best suited to small store owners who want to add live search functionality to their site without some of the more advanced features offered by other plugins.

Ease of use

The plugin is easy to install and automatically replaces the default WordPress search function. The developer has provided detailed documentation and offers email support for all plugin users.

Pricing

There’s a limited free version available in the WordPress plugin directory. A premium version of the plugin is available for a one-time cost of $49.

Comparison of the top WooCommerce search plugins

Factors to consider when choosing a product search plugin

Does it seamlessly integrate with WordPress and WooCommerce?

You don’t want to spend hours troubleshooting issues or waste money on something that doesn’t work. Solutions available in the WordPress repository or WooCommerce extension library are the most likely to work smoothly with your store. Check reviews and documentation before installing.

Could it slow down your site?

Nearly all WooCommerce search plugins use your site’s web server to index your product and carry out your customers’ search requests. Depending on the number of products in your store and your web hosting package, this could slow down your site.

But, the great news is that the top plugin in our review, Jetpack Search, uses Automattic’s speedy cloud servers to index your products and search your site — this means that no matter how many products you add to your store, you are guaranteed to always offer a lightning-fast experience to your customers.

Does it update its search index in real time?

Your customers can only find your products through search if they’re added to the index of your WooCommerce search plugin. Therefore, it’s important that the plugin you choose indexes your products as soon as they are added to your store. For example, Jetpack Search automatically indexes your site using powerful cloud servers, meaning products are visible in search results within minutes of them being added to your store.

What support is offered?

It’s also important to consider the support available. Is there a way to directly reach out to an expert for support with the plugin, or are you limited to asking your questions through a forum? The top plugin in our review, Jetpack Search, allows you to easily raise support tickets, which are responded to by a dedicated team of Jetpack Happiness Engineers, who are experts in WordPress and WooCommerce.

Does it offer a good value for your money?

You should also consider if your WooCommerce search plugin is cost-effective. You should consider the features it offers against its cost. For example, Jetpack Search offers excellent value for most WooCommerce stores as it provides a lightning-fast search experience with a wide range of advanced features, all for a relatively low monthly cost.

Conclusion: What is the best product search plugin for WooCommerce?

The best product search plugin for WooCommerce will depend on several factors, including your experience with WooCommerce and WordPress, the size of your site, and if you need the plugin to offer features such as instant search.

But it’s clear from the comparison table above that Jetpack Search is the best product search plugin for WooCommerce. Jetpack Search is an affordable, hosted search solution that can easily scale with your store as your business grows.

It offers an impressive range of premium features, including instant search and powerful product filtering. It’s simple to set up and works automatically behind the scenes to keep your site’s search index up to date and deliver fast search results to your customers without using your valuable server resources.

Plus, as it’s made by the people behind WooCommerce and WordPress.com, it’ll integrate seamlessly into your site, and you can get help from Jetpack’s team of Happiness Engineers if you have any questions about how to set up, install, or optimize the plugin.

Frequently asked questions about WooCommerce product search plugins

What makes a good WooCommerce product search plugin?

A good WooCommerce product search plugin should provide fast and accurate search results that help your customers find the products they’re looking for. It should also offer a range of search features that ensure your store’s search experience is seamless, including instant search, filtering, and support for faceted search.

A good WooCommerce search plugin should also be easy to use and automatically update its index every time you add new products to your store. Jetpack Search, the top plugin in our review, offers all these features plus many more and is one of the best WooCommerce search plugins available.

How much does a top‑tier WooCommerce product search plugin cost?

WooCommerce product search plugins vary significantly in price. The top plugin from our review, Jetpack Search, is fantastic value, offers a wide range of powerful features, and is available to try free of charge for three months. Then, it’s $8.25 for 10,000 records or search requests per month.

Is it easy to set up a product search plugin on WooCommerce?

This varies massively between plugins. Jetpack Search is the top WooCommerce search plugin in our review and allows you to easily set up your customers’ search experience. You can also fully customize your site’s search functionality to help customers find the products they are looking for.