[Recommendation] Improve search

[jdevalk]

Recommendation title

Improve your site's search results

Recommendation description

We should help people improve their site's search results in a few ways.

flowchart TD
    A[Start → Ask: does the site need on-site search?<br/>We strongly recommend yes] -->|No| B[Install the Disable Search plugin]
    A -->|Yes| C[Generate a search URL using a word from a post/page title<br/>Open it and review the results]
    C --> D{Does the search results page look good?}
    D -->|No| E[Fix your search template]
    D -->|Yes| F{Do they use ACF and NOT ACF Better Search?}
    E --> F
    F -->|Yes| G[Suggest installing ACF Better Search]
    F -->|No| H{Do they have many PDFs in the media library?}
    G --> H
    H -->|No| I[Recommend SearchWP]
    H -->|Yes| J[Strongly recommend SearchWP - it adds PDF search support]
    I --> K[All good → done]
    J --> K

    %% Links
    click B href "https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-search/" "Open Disable Search on wordpress.org"
    click G href "https://wordpress.org/plugins/acf-better-search/" "Open ACF Better Search on wordpress.org"
    click I href "https://searchwp.com/how-to-make-wordpress-search-pdf-files/" "How to make WP search PDFs (SearchWP guide)"
    click J href "https://searchwp.com/how-to-make-wordpress-search-pdf-files/" "How to make WP search PDFs (SearchWP guide)"

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Recommendation category

configuration

Other category

No response

Required capability

manage_options

Onboarding recommendation

false

Points to award

1

Recommendation priority

medium

Dismissable

true

Snoozable

true

Additional Information

There's so much value lost on many sites if you don't index the PDFs.