About this plugin
The built-in WordPress search finds a title when it is typed exactly as
written. It does not find the SKU, the category, or the word with a typo.
Shop Search for WooCommerce turns it into a shop search that understands what your
customers mean – and shows you what they did not find.
Everything runs in your own WordPress database. The plugin contacts no
external service.
At a glance
- Live suggestions with image, price and stock status – from two characters on
- Finds SKUs, categories and tags, ranked by relevance
- “Did you mean …?” checked against the real number of results
- Results page with tabs per section, sorting and an empty state that helps
- Search log with the searches that found nothing – your shopping list of
missing products and words
- Blocks, Elementor widgets, shortcodes and filter hooks
- No cloud, no tracking, no external requests
Need synonyms, automatic typo correction, filters or rules per search term?
They are part of the separate plugin
F12 Shop Search Pro
– see “Free and Pro” below.
As you type
- Suggestion list from two characters on: word completions and the
matching products with image, price, “Sale” and “Out of stock”, plus the
SKU when it was what matched.
- Popular products on the first click into an empty search field
(optional).
- Width, corner radius and colors of the list are adjustable, with a live
preview.
- Cached and rate-limited, so a script hammering the endpoint does not slow
down your shop.
What is found
- SKUs, including those of variations – the product is found.
- Categories and tags as search text; matching categories as cards above
the results.
- Relevance: a full title match ranks before an SKU, before a category,
before body text.
- “Did you mean …?” for typos, checked against the actual number of
results – no guessing.
On the results page
- Tabs per section (All · Products · Posts · Pages …) with result counts;
“All” as a grouped overview. Sections combine any content types.
- Sorting, unit price, pack sizes and badges on the product card.
- Empty state with tips and categories instead of a dead end.
- The plugin’s own results page, your theme’s, or a page you design
yourself, with any theme – tested with Twenty Twenty-Five and Twenty
Twenty-One.
Insights
- Search log in your own database: frequent searches and searches without
results for the last 7, 30 or 90 days – the list that tells you which
products or words your shop is missing.
Fits in
- Blocks for the block editor, Elementor widgets and shortcodes.
- Every setting is also available as a filter hook – for developers. A
filter always wins over the setting; the hook name is shown next to each
field.
Free and Pro
This plugin is complete on its own. For shops with a large range, many
spellings of the same product, or a team that tunes the search every week,
F12 Shop Search Pro
is a separate plugin from Forge12 that adds:
- Synonyms with a visual editor – connect terms, categories and products
with a line, so “wholemeal” finds the “whole grain flour”. Simulate the
search first; get suggestions from real searches.
- Typos corrected automatically – “Dinkl” shows the results for “Dinkel”
right away, with a way back to the typed word.
- Word forms and compound words – “pans” finds “pan”,
“wholegrainflour” finds “whole-grain flour”; only words from your own range,
nothing guessed.
- Filters on the results page – category, price (steps or slider),
availability and any WooCommerce attribute, with the number of results at
every value; without reloading the page, as a panel on phones.
- Rules per search term – pin a product to the top, hide results, or send
a search straight to a page.
- Custom fields (also ACF) searched along.
- Click rate per term and “searched but rarely clicked”, with a button
that creates the rule right there.
- Search templates – carry the look of field, suggestion list, results
page and filters over to the next site.
- Avada Post Cards, icon sets and the search field in the header;
WPML and Polylang.
- Fast path for suggestions, delivered without loading plugins and theme.
com
Source code and third-party software
The settings screen is a React application. Its readable source code is in the
js is generated from it. To rebuild:
js 18 or later; the help chapters in
js by
mjs).
Bundled with the plugin:
- Inter variable font ( build/fonts/ ) – SIL Open Font License 1.1,
org
- lucide-react icons – ISC license
- react-router – MIT license
- WordPress packages ( @wordpress/components, element, i18n, api-fetch ) –
0-or-later
0-or-later.