Over the next couple weeks, I plan on writing a few posts and get a couple discussions going about potential features I’d like to see built into the core WordPress installation.   We’ve talked about this in general a little bit before and many of these features are already available as WordPress plugins, but I feel they are important enough to bloggers that they should be built directly into WordPress.    Doing this also helps minimize the number of plugins used by WordPress.org bloggers, which can in turn minimize security risks or huge drains on system resources which can come from plugins.

This week I’ve decided to talk about the current WordPress search feature.  In its current state, the WordPress search feature is very basic.   You type in your keyword(s) and it will display all posts which contain that keyword in the reverse order of how they were posted (newest posts first).   This obviously does not make it easy for a reader of your blog to find the more relevant posts without a little luck.  The post they are looking for might be 3 pages deep!

As a result, many WordPress users have turned to building a Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) into their WordPress blog.   This allows Google AdSense ads (it is optional), but much more importantly, it uses Google’s algorithm to display the most relevant posts first, allowing readers to find what they are looking for!

In a future version of WordPress, I’d like to see some attention put into building an improved search feature within WordPress.   Having an improved search algorithm would also be beneficial when searching within the WordPress dashboard as that search works the same way.  When trying to find a post to edit, I sometimes have to flip through several pages looking for it (if it is an older post).

What do you think?  Would you like to see improved search within WordPress?   How high of a priority is it to you?

For people wondering how to easily install Google’s Custom Search Engine (GCSE) on their WordPress blog, here are two resources I recommend:

• Build Your Google Custom Search Engine – The first step is to actually create your Google Custom Search Engine.   The post by Maki over at Dosh Dosh does a GREAT job of explaining how to do this.   Towards the end Maki explains how to actually integrate it into your WordPress blog, but rather than go through all those steps, you’ll want to instead check out the second step.
• Integrate your Google Custom Search Engine into WordPress – Once you’ve built your custom search engine, head over to this post and figure out a quick and easy way to integrate it into your WordPress blog.   This method ONLY requires you to alter the searchform.php and search.php files (which most themes come with), so it is really easy.

Why Use Google’s Custom Search Engine?

With the current setup of the WordPress search engine, posts are displayed with the most recent post first based upon the search term.   Using Google’s Custom Search Engine, it will use Google’s search algorithm to display your posts with the most relevant post on top and you can actually integrate it into your WordPress blog, so it looks natural.   Using this also allows you to display Google AdSense ads, which can earn you money on some blogs.

The main downside with this method is that Google has to actually index the post before it will appear in your blog’s search results, but that won’t be a problem for most blogs.  It will just add a small delay before posts appear in your search results.