Features Overview

Lumenare Search provides a comprehensive set of features to enhance your WordPress site’s search functionality.

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Instant Live Search

Real-time search results appear as users type, with a dropdown showing the most relevant results instantly. No page reloads required.

How it works:

• Search triggers after minimum character threshold (default: 3)
• AJAX request fetches results from the custom index
• Results display in a styled dropdown below the search input
• Users can click results or press Enter to see full results page

Benefits:

• Faster content discovery
• Reduced bounce rate
• Modern, professional feel
• Works on any device

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Predictive Keywords

Intelligent keyword suggestions based on your indexed content help users find what they’re looking for faster.

As users type, the system suggests complete keywords that exist in your index. This guides users toward successful searches and reduces zero-result queries.

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Custom Search Index

Fast database-driven search using weighted keywords extracted from titles, excerpts, content, and taxonomy terms. The index is automatically maintained as content changes.

Index features:

• Keywords normalized for consistent matching
• Weights stored with each keyword entry
• Automatic indexing on post save/delete
• Batch reindexing for large sites
• Partial reindexing for targeted updates

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Keyword Match Modes

Choose between matching ANY keyword (OR) for broader results or ALL keywords (AND) for precision:

Match ANY (OR) – Default

Returns results containing at least one of the search keywords. Best for:

• Broad topic searches
• Exploratory queries
• Sites where discoverability is priority

Example: Searching “WordPress security” returns posts with “WordPress” OR “security”

Match ALL (AND) – Precision

Returns only results containing ALL search keywords. Best for:

• Product names and specific phrases
• Technical queries
• Sites where precision is priority

Example: Searching “WordPress security” returns only posts with BOTH “WordPress” AND “security”

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Stop Words Configuration

Exclude common words from indexing to improve relevance and performance. Configure which words to ignore (e.g., “a”, “an”, “the”, “is”, “are”).

Why use stop words:

• Reduces index size
• Improves query performance
• Prevents common words from diluting relevance
• Focuses results on meaningful keywords

Default stop words include: a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, from, has, he, her, his, in, is, it, my, of, on, or, our, she, that, the, their, they, this, to, was, we, what, when, where, which, who, will, with, you, your

Note: Changes to stop words require reindexing to take effect.

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Synonyms Support

Define groups of equivalent words to expand search coverage. For example, if you define “car, automobile, vehicle” as synonyms, searching for “car” will also find posts with “automobile” or “vehicle.”

How to configure:

1. Go to Settings → Search Quality → Synonyms
2. Enter one synonym group per line
3. Separate words with commas

Example groups:

car, automobile, vehicle
doctor, physician, dr
quick, fast, rapid, speedy
buy, purchase, order

Benefits:

• Improves search recall without adding content
• Handles different terminology and jargon
• Works instantly—no reindexing needed

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Fuzzy Matching

Find results even with misspellings using configurable Levenshtein distance (1-5 character differences). Higher thresholds are more permissive but may return less relevant results.

How it works:

• User searches for “computr” (misspelled)
• System finds “computer” in index (1 edit distance)
• Result includes the correctly-spelled match

Configuration:

Threshold	Behavior
1	Very strict – only single-character typos
2	Balanced – recommended default
3	Permissive – may return less relevant results
4-5	Very permissive – use with caution

Note: Fuzzy matching only applies to words 4+ characters long to prevent false positives on short words.

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Phrase Boosting

Boost relevance for specific phrases defined in settings. When users search for exact phrases you’ve configured, those results receive a significant relevance boost.

Why it matters:

Without phrase boosting, searching “Master System” might return posts about any “system” ranked higher than posts specifically about the “Sega Master System.”

With phrase boosting, posts containing the exact phrase “Master System” rank significantly higher.

Configuration:

1. Go to Settings → Search Quality → Search Phrases
2. Enter one phrase per line
3. Set the Phrase Boost Multiplier (default: 5)

Boost calculation:

• Phrase in title: multiplier × 3
• Phrase in excerpt: multiplier × 2
• Phrase in content: multiplier × 1

Example: With default multiplier (5), a phrase match in the title adds 15 to relevance score.

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Dynamic Trending Ranking

Automatically boost content that’s gaining traction in searches. Trending topics are identified based on search frequency and growth rate, then used to boost related content in search results.

How it works:

1. All search queries are tracked
2. System calculates trending scores based on:

• Search frequency (how often a query is searched)
• Growth rate (how quickly searches are increasing)
• Recency (recent searches weighted higher)

1. Related content receives relevance boost

Configuration options:

Setting	Description	Default
Enable Trending	Turn feature on/off	Disabled
Boost Strength	How much trending affects ranking (0-2)	0.5
Decay Period	Days before trends decay	30
Minimum Searches	Queries needed to become trending	5

Trending scores are calculated daily via WordPress cron (2 AM by default).

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Filterable Results

Filter search results by categories and date ranges to help users narrow down their search.

Category Filter:

• Shows all categories with posts in results
• Multiple categories can be selected
• Filters update results in real-time

Date Filter:

• Filter by date range (from/to)
• Useful for news sites or time-sensitive content
• Works with category filter

Both filters can be enabled/disabled in Settings → Filters.

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Search Term Highlighting

Visually highlights matching terms in titles and excerpts for better user experience.

What gets highlighted:

• Original search terms
• Synonym matches (if configured)
• Fuzzy matches (if enabled)

How it looks:

Highlighted terms appear with a yellow background. Customize styling via CSS class .lumenare-highlight.

Benefits:

• Users immediately see why results matched
• Validates search relevance
• Faster scanning of results

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Multiple Integration Points

Lumenare Search integrates seamlessly with WordPress:

• Automatic replacement – Replaces default WordPress search forms
• Shortcode support –
  Search for:
  for custom placement
• Widget support – “Lumenare Search” widget for sidebars
• Gutenberg integration – Automatically replaces core search block

No template editing required for basic integration.

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Security Features

Built-in protection keeps your site safe:

• SQL injection protection – All queries use prepared statements
• Code injection filtering – Dangerous patterns stripped from queries
• Character filtering – Blocks dangerous characters (parentheses, backticks, etc.)
• Nonce verification – All AJAX requests verified
• Security logging – Optional logging of filtered queries

All user input is sanitized and validated before processing.

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Autocorrect Prevention

Disable browser/device autocorrect to preserve technical terms and brand names in search queries.

Problem solved: When users search for “Qdrant” (a brand name), autocorrect might change it to “Quadrant,” breaking their search.

With autocorrect prevention enabled, the exact input is preserved.

Technical implementation: Adds HTML attributes: autocorrect="off", autocomplete="off", autocapitalize="off", spellcheck="false"

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Analytics Integration

Built-in search analytics tracking provides insights into user behavior:

Popular Queries

See which searches are most common. Helps you understand what content users want.

Zero-Result Queries

Identify searches that return no results. These represent content gaps or missing synonyms.

Trending Topics

Queries gaining traction over time. Updated daily via cron job.

Click-Through Tracking

See which results users actually click. Understand if top-ranked results are actually helpful.

Access analytics: Settings → Lumenare Search → Analytics tab

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Partial Reindexing

Update your search index without rebuilding everything:

• Index only new posts – Posts published since last reindex
• Index specific post types – Only posts, only pages, etc.
• Index by date range – Posts within specific dates

Useful for large sites where full reindexing takes time.

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Custom Taxonomy Support

Configure weights for any custom taxonomy to prioritize certain types of content organization.

Examples:

• WooCommerce product categories
• Custom portfolio types
• Event categories

Weights are configured per-taxonomy in Settings → Search Quality → Taxonomy Term Weighting.

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Performance Optimized

Lumenare Search is built for speed:

• Efficient database queries – Uses indexes, prepared statements
• Batch indexing – Large sites index without timeouts
• Result caching – Search results cached for 5 minutes
• Minimal footprint – Only loads on pages with search

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