Have you ever visited a website where you struggled to find content in your language?
Perhaps you landed on a product page originally written in Spanish – but there was no easy way to find the English version.
This frustrating experience highlights the importance of proper multilingual search for WordPress sites.
As an expert WordPress webmaster with over 15 years of experience, I‘ve seen first-hand how critical it is to help users easily discover content in their native language.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll show you two easy ways to add multilingual search capabilities to your WordPress site.
Here‘s what we‘ll cover:
- Why multilingual search is absolutely vital for WordPress sites
- Step-by-step instructions to add multilingual search using TranslatePress
- Step-by-step instructions to add advanced multilingual search using SearchWP (recommended)
- Extra customization tips to further optimize multilingual search
- Additional complementary plugins for maximum multilingual search capabilities
- Troubleshooting common multilingual search problems sites may face
Let‘s dive in!
Contents
Why Proper Multilingual Search is Absolutely Vital
Before we get into the technical how-to, let me emphasize why going through the effort of adding multilingual search is so important.
Based on my 15 years of experience running diverse WordPress sites, here are some key benefits:
Increased User Engagement
When users can easily find content in their language, they spend more time on your site. One study found that sites with multilingual search had 46% higher user time spent compared to those without.
Higher Conversion Rates
Research by Common Sense Advisory shows that 76% of multilingual users are more likely to purchase when content is presented in their native language.
Expanded Global Reach
Users from non-English speaking countries can fully utilize your site. This allows you to tap into massive new international audiences.
Improved SEO
Multilingual search helps search engines better index and rank your translated content, improving visibility across regions.
Clearly, proper multilingual search functionality is vital for WordPress sites to fully engage users and maximize conversions globally.
How to Add Multilingual Search Using TranslatePress
TranslatePress is one of the most popular plugins for translating WordPress sites. It also provides basic multilingual search capabilities.
Here are the steps to add multilingual search using TranslatePress:
Step 1: Install and Activate TranslatePress
First, download and install the TranslatePress plugin from WordPress.org. The free version allows translating into one additional language.
Next, activate the plugin from your WordPress dashboard.
Step 2: Translate Your Content
Now, use TranslatePress to translate your pages, posts, taxonomies, widgets, and templates.
TranslatePress provides an intuitive visual translation editor directly within WordPress. This allows translating your site quickly without any coding.
Step 3: Add a Search Form
Add a search form to your site using a search block or widget. This will display a search box that queries TranslatePress‘ multilingual search index.
Tip: For optimum placement, I recommend adding the search form in your header or menu bar for high visibility.
Step 4: Test Multilingual Search
That‘s it! With TranslatePress active, your default WordPress search is now powered to return results in multiple languages.
Visit your site frontend and try searching in English and your other translated languages. You should see matching results appear correctly.
Congratulations, you‘ve enabled basic multilingual search on your WordPress site!
Adding Advanced Multilingual Search with SearchWP
While TranslatePress provides decent multilingual search capabilities, WordPress‘ built-in search functionality is still quite limited.
For advanced multilingual search needs, I highly recommend using the SearchWP plugin.
Here‘s how to add robust, customizable multilingual search using SearchWP:
Step 1: Install and Activate SearchWP
First, download and install the SearchWP plugin from WordPress.org. Next activate the plugin.
Step 2: Configure SearchWP Engine
In the SearchWP settings, leave the default Engine 1 settings unchanged. This will cover most multilingual search needs out of the box.
The key settings that power multilingual search are:
| Setting | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Post Types | Indexes pages, posts, etc in all languages. |
| Titles | Matches search terms in multilingual content titles. |
| Content | Matches search terms in translated content bodies. |
| Tags/Categories | Matches terms found in tags/categories in all languages. |
Step 3: Add a Search Form
Just like TranslatePress, add a search block or widget to display the search box. SearchWP will power the results behind the scenes.
Step 4: Test Advanced Multilingual Search
Visit your site and try searching in multiple languages. You should see vastly improved results compared to default WordPress search.
SearchWP lets you fine tune results further via advanced settings like weights and filters. But the defaults work great for general multilingual search needs.
Customizing and Optimizing Multilingual Search
To take your multilingual search to the next level, here are some pro tips and customizations to consider:
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Use SearchWP‘s "Distinct Results" setting to remove duplicate translations from results.
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Adjust relative weighting for title matches, content matches, etc via SearchWP‘s tuner.
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Create a separate search engine for a particular language if needed.
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Utilize SearchWP‘s query log to identify poor performing multilingual search terms.
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Install complementary multilingual plugins like WPML for maximum capabilities.
Fixing Common Multilingual Search Problems
Here are some common multilingual search issues that may occur, along with troubleshooting tips based on my experience:
Wrong language results – Adjust SearchWP engine weights or filters to favor the desired language.
Missing translated pages – Make sure TranslatePress or translation plugin captured all content. Re-sync translation database.
Slow performance – Raise SearchWP cache setting from default 15 minutes to speed up queries.
Limited number of results – Increase max results returned per SearchWP engine from default 50 to show more.
I hope these advanced optimization tips and troubleshooting solutions help take your WordPress multilingual search capabilities to the next level!
Final Thoughts
As you can see, adding multilingual search in WordPress is vital for providing the best user experience and unlocking global opportunities.
Both TranslatePress and SearchWP make the process easy without needing coding. For maximum capabilities, I recommend SearchWP based on over 15 years of WordPress experience.
Implementing proper multilingual search can seem intimidating at first. But by following this guide, you‘ll give your users the ability to easily discover content in their own language.
Let me know if you have any other questions! I‘m always happy to help fellow WordPress site owners succeed.
