Search not turning up all that's there.

Hi, it’s the strangest thing. Only just recently realized that the search isn’t turning up all results for a specific search. I’ve got newer items that are showing up and old ones but for whatever reason it’s selectively picking out certain items not to show.

I’m not requiring more functionality. I’m simply looking for it to turn up the proper results.

For example:
I’ve got many posts from over the years for a specific venue. A search for that venue’s name turns up old posts but not the latest ones. I assure you, the actual venue’s name appears within each of those posts as well as in the title.

Built in WP search not that great; better off removing the theme search which uses WP, then add a ‘better search’ plugin which provides more relevance and options.

This is a decade old issue with WP and will be an issue with any theme, as the theme is not managing the search, WP core is doing that.

So, as stated – to upgrade the ‘functionality’ to provide more accurate searches, you will need to add another solution to modify how WP does its searches.

Often when learning how WordPress works, you can find wealth of tutorials as most topics related to “normal shenanigans with WordPress” are well documented.

E.g.,
https://wordpress.org/plugins/relevanssi/

http://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/12-wordpress-search-plugins-to-improve-your-site-search/

Welcome to WordPress!

Thanks kindly Chris for chiming in.

BUT, I’m concerned about losing the AJAX functionality. Don’t completely understand how it works, but will the speediness and live search features still be there if I add another plugin to replace WP Core’s search?

I honestly thought TagDiv’s employment of AJAX had been superseding that of the core.

Just went to my Google Custom Search panel (Used to use it years ago before I moved to WP).

After mucking about a bit I thought to enter in the search word I was having trouble with. Appears that the problem is there as well. Keep in mind, this is AT the Google Custom Search Panel, without having made use of it on my site.

Can anyone think of how I can go about figuring out what’s causing this?

Google custom search is dependent on your sitemap being submitted to your account there, and webmaster tools (search console); so good to ‘force respider’ that from search console at least.

Also, this is funnily enough one of the reasons we still use the ‘keywords’ option on certain sites to help with search.

Quoted searches help with Google CSE, too.

But best to try one of the free WP search enhancement tools to see what goes on there.

At least GSE “should” be showing you everything from a search, in reverse date order.

Setup of proper meta data via Yoast or similar does help, too obviously. Meaning if the search term is not in headline, h1, description/excerpt, h2, alt tag for image, keywords, post meta general paragraph text, or page slug/permalink … less likely to be found by that term.

Not sure that helps. Just more feedback. I’m only hyper-aware of this as Google just killed our paid custom search engine which we had integrated into our main website to show up in results from the local site search tool; but now they downgraded to the free version which might show our competitor ads on our own service portal, which is super dumb. I mean, why is Google getting out of the search business? It’s like killing the video editor on YouTube? Why? (( SIGH ))

Thing is that, Google’s results are reflecting exactly what my site’s own WP Search is turning up. Google’s been extraordinarily on top of spidering my site. New items appear within hours at google.

But yes, regarding what you’ve mentioned: I usually reserve the name and address of the venue for H3 rather than H2 (which I reserve for the event date). Dependent upon the specific situation, that is.

Had gotten into Yoast off and on over the years. Not sure I want to head down that direction again. Will try out those other suggestions of yours on my dummy test site.

Sorry to hear about your own dealings with Google. Going mildly insane trying to get included in Google News. Might as well be driving backwards up a dark hill with no street lights.

Thanks again Chris. 😉

We’ve been lucky with Google News — but we’re dinosaurs in publishing (founded 1981!); and were in the Google News beta in 2005. So, hence my sometimes having had the pain and torment to speak about here. 🙂 #WAHHHH

( our new website, we are building our own meta hooks in a custom plugin as Yoast has just gotten so intrusive I have started to hate it — now they “warn you” when you delete a page that should do a redirect, to try to sell you pro version which has that feature … BAH!)