Relevanssi Premium Review: Search Plugin for Custom Results

Search is often the most underappreciated function on a WordPress site—until it fails. When users can’t find what they’re looking for, they bounce. That bounce means lost readers, lower conversions, and missed opportunities. The default WordPress search is extremely basic. It only searches titles and post content. It doesn’t understand relevance, custom fields, taxonomies, or fuzzy matches. If you’re running a blog, online store, membership site, or content archive, the limitations become painfully obvious. That’s why Relevanssi Premium Plugin exists.

It replaces the default search engine with a highly customizable, relevance-based system that lets you control exactly how search works across your site. From indexing custom post types to weighting results based on custom fields, Relevanssi gives you control over the user search experience like never before.

In this article, you’ll discover:

• What Relevanssi Premium does and why it matters

• Key features and real-world use cases

• How it compares to the free version and competitors

• Setup process and customization options

• Pros, cons, pricing, and final recommendations

Let’s dive into why Relevanssi Premium is trusted by thousands of developers, publishers, and store owners to power smarter search on WordPress.

What Is Relevanssi Premium?

Relevanssi Premium is a powerful WordPress plugin that replaces the standard search function with an advanced, feature-rich alternative. It indexes your entire site—including custom post types, fields, taxonomies, comments, and even shortcodes—so that users get better, more accurate, and more relevant search results.

Developed by Mikko Saari, Relevanssi comes in both a free and premium version. While the free version is feature-packed, Relevanssi Premium unlocks a deeper level of customization, including:

• PDF and document indexing

• Multisite support

• Search term highlighting and logging

• Weight control for post types and fields

• Fuzzy matching (partial words, typos)

• Search redirect rules

• Custom field indexing with advanced controls

• Term synonyms, keyword stemming, and more

With Relevanssi, search becomes a strategic feature—not an afterthought.

Why the Default WordPress Search Falls Short

Before highlighting what makes Relevanssi Premium so powerful, it’s important to understand what’s missing from the native WordPress search:

• It only searches post titles and content

• Doesn’t support custom fields or taxonomies

• No control over weighting or relevance

• Results are sorted by date, not importance

• It lacks partial match support (no fuzzy matching)

• You can’t index documents like PDFs

• There are no analytics or logs

If your site is content-heavy or highly structured, these limitations can lead to irrelevant or empty search results—frustrating users and damaging trust.

Relevanssi Premium solves all of these issues with one plugin.

Key Features of Relevanssi Premium

Let’s take a closer look at the features that make Relevanssi Premium an essential upgrade for WordPress users.

1. Full Content Indexing

Relevanssi doesn’t just index post titles and content—it goes deeper. It can index:

• Custom post types

• Custom fields (ACF, Pods, Meta Box, etc.)

• Categories and tags

• Custom taxonomies

• Excerpts and comments

• User profiles

• Attachments (PDF, .doc, .txt, etc.)

You choose what’s indexed. For example, if you want a WooCommerce store to prioritize product attributes and custom fields over the product description, you can do that.

2. Relevance-Based Search with Weighting

Search results aren’t just shown in chronological order—they’re scored based on relevance.

You can assign weights to different elements like:

• Title (e.g., 5x)

• Content (e.g., 2x)

• Tags (e.g., 3x)

• Custom fields (e.g., 4x)

This allows you to fine-tune how search results appear, so your best or most relevant content rises to the top.

3. PDF and Document Indexing

One of the standout features of Relevanssi Premium is its ability to index file content.

Supported file types include:

• PDF

• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)

• Excel spreadsheets

• OpenOffice formats

• Text files

This is ideal for knowledge bases, education platforms, government sites, and other resource libraries. Users can search the actual content inside these files, not just the filename or title.

4. Fuzzy Matching and Partial Word Search

With fuzzy matching, Relevanssi can return relevant results even if the exact term doesn’t match.

For example:

• A search for “market” could return results for “marketing” or “marketplace”

• Misspelled searches like “photogrphy” can still return relevant posts

This improves UX significantly and helps catch errors users may make when typing.

5. Synonyms, Stemming, and Keyword Logic

Relevanssi Premium supports:

• Synonyms: Treat “car” and “automobile” as the same

• Stemming: “Run” and “running” can return the same results

• AND/OR logic: Allow users to match all or some keywords

These NLP-style tools make your search smarter, especially in long-form content and blogs with deep archives.

6. Search Term Highlighting

Search results can show highlighted keywords in titles and excerpts. This makes it easier for users to identify why a result was returned and quickly scan content.

Highlighting can be:

• Inline with bold or colored spans

• Customizable by theme or plugin CSS

• Disabled if not needed

7. Search Redirects and Aliases

Sometimes, you want a search query to go to a specific page. Relevanssi lets you create redirects based on keywords.

Examples:

• A search for “refund” redirects to the refund policy page

• “Contact support” leads to the contact form

This improves usability and reduces friction for users searching with intent.

8. Analytics and Logging

Want to know what users are searching for? Relevanssi Premium keeps logs of:

• Most common search queries

• Failed searches (no results)

• User IPs and referrers (optional)

• Search terms per post

You can use this data to create new content, improve navigation, and optimize internal links.

9. Multisite and Multilingual Support

Relevanssi Premium works with:

• WordPress Multisite networks (index shared or per-site)

• WPML and Polylang

• qTranslate and TranslatePress

You can create language-specific indexes or merge them based on your needs.

Real-World Use Cases

Relevanssi Premium can transform the user experience across a variety of WordPress websites.

Blogs and Magazines

• Let users find posts by tag, category, or custom taxonomies

• Highlight matches in post excerpts

• Weight evergreen guides higher than news posts

WooCommerce Stores

• Index product SKU, brand, categories, and attributes

• Improve discoverability of long-tail products

• Allow partial matches (e.g., “blu” returns “Bluetooth Speaker”)

Online Course Sites

• Search inside lessons, course descriptions, or user comments

• Index custom fields like course difficulty or language

• Redirect “support” searches to your help desk page

Nonprofits and Government Sites

• Enable full PDF search for forms and public documents

• Show preview snippets with highlighted terms

• Track user queries for improved content planning

Corporate Knowledge Bases

• Index technical documentation in Word and PDF

• Use fuzzy search to account for terminology differences

• Apply custom logic to boost important how-to articles

Setup and Customization

Installing Relevanssi Premium is straightforward:

1. Purchase and download the plugin from Relevanssi.com

2. Upload and activate it in WordPress

3. Go to Settings > Relevanssi to start configuring

4. Choose what post types, taxonomies, and custom fields to index

5. Rebuild the index with one click

6. Adjust weights, synonyms, redirect rules, and more

The plugin is compatible with most themes and search templates out of the box. However, for advanced use, developers can use hooks and filters to customize behavior even further.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Full-text search of posts, products, documents, and more

• Indexes everything WordPress can store

• Control over weighting, logic, and display

• Works with ACF, WooCommerce, WPML, and custom plugins

• Search logs and user behavior tracking

• One-time purchase with lifetime use

• Developer-friendly with excellent documentation

Cons:

• Requires manual index rebuilding after large updates

• Some features require PHP tweaks (e.g., weight filters)

• UI could feel overwhelming to beginners

• PDF indexing requires server-level support (like pdftotext or Ghostscript)

Pricing

Relevanssi Premium is sold directly from the developer’s site:

• Personal: €99 for unlimited sites (non-commercial)

• Business: €299/year (commercial use, unlimited sites)

• Developer: €499/year (client work and SaaS use)

All plans include:

• Lifetime plugin use

• 1 year of updates and support

• All features, including PDF indexing and redirect logic

You can continue using the plugin after your license expires, but you’ll need to renew for updates and support.

How It Compares to Alternatives

Relevanssi Premium is the best fit for developers and site owners who want deep search customization without needing external infrastructure like Elasticsearch.

Final Verdict: Is Relevanssi Premium Worth It?

If your site relies on content—especially custom content—and your users depend on search to navigate, then Relevanssi Premium is absolutely worth it.

It brings:

• Smarter results

• Better relevance

• Indexing flexibility

• Advanced control over weighting, synonyms, and display

• PDF/document search for resource libraries

• Analytics to guide your content strategy

For eCommerce, education, media, government, and B2B sites, this plugin adds serious value for both users and administrators.

Ready to Give WordPress Search Superpowers?

Stop sending users to Google to find your content. Give them what they need—on your site, fast, and intelligently.

Click here to Get Relevanssi Premium and Transform Your WordPress Search Experience