As many of you know, the WordPress search facility has been criticised by many for not providing relevant results. Yolink Search is a plugin that aims to address this by replacing the default WordPress search facility.
In addition to improving search results, it also highlights the search term using multi-colour keyword highlighting on search results to help visitors find the post or page they want easier. The plugin also adds a sharing option that allows selected text to be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs and more.
Through the settings area you can choose whether the search function works on pages, posts or both. The type of search preview can be modified to highlight keyword locations and the maximum number of result paragraphs can be changed. Social media sharing can also be switched off.
Yolink Search is free to use on personal blogs however you need to choose one of their premium plans if you have any advertisements on your blog. There are two premium options available. The first option costs $60 per year ($5 per month) but is only allowed for websites with 5,000 visitors per month or less. This pricing plan completely baffles me. 5,000 visits per month equates to around 160 visits per day. Do you know of any website owners with only 160 visits per day who is willing to pay $60 per year to improve their search function?
Example of Yolink search result:
If your website gets up to 20,000 monthly visitors the plan costs $300 per year. This equates to $25 per month for any website which has more around 650 daily visitors or less. I do agree that the WordPress search function could be greatly improved and from testing Yolink it appears that it does greatly improve this feature. However $25 per month seems very expensive for a plugin of this nature., particularly when there are free alternatives like Relevanssi available.
Thanks,
Kevin
Yolink Search WordPress Plugin: Information | Download
