How to Search By Category in WordPress (Best Method)

Do you want to enable search by category in WordPress?

Adding a category-specific search to your website can help visitors find what they’re looking for, no matter what content you publish. For example, visitors might search particular blog categories, product categories, membership levels, and more.

In this guide, we will show you how you can add a search by category feature to WordPress.

Why Add Search By Category to WordPress?

Categories are an easy way to organize the content on your WordPress website. Categories can also help visitors find interesting posts.

For example, many sites show their categories in a dropdown menu or sidebar.

If you have lots of blog posts, then you can go one step further and add a search by category feature to your website. This can help visitors find the content they’re looking for, even if you have lots of blog posts.

If you are using WooCommerce, then you can even create a product category search for your online store and get more sales.

Similarly, if you run a WordPress membership site, then you might use search by category to help visitors find specific members, groups, forums, online courses, and more.

With that being said, let’s see how you can add a search by category feature to WordPress.

How to Add Search By Category in WordPress

The easiest way to add a category specific search to WordPress is by using SearchWP. It is the best search plugin and allows you to improve the built-in WordPress search.

With SearchWP, you can search content that WordPress ignores by default, including custom post types, PDF files, WooCommerce products, and categories.

First, you need to install and activate the SearchWP plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to SearchWP » Settings and then click on the ‘General’ tab.

Here, you need to enter your license in the ‘License Key’ box. You can find this information under your account on the SearchWP site. Once you are done, make sure to click the ‘Verify Key’ button.

Create a Custom Search Algorithm

After activating the plugin, you can fine-tune how SearchWP indexes, searches, and displays your content. You can think of this as creating a custom Google search algorithm that’s just for your WordPress blog or website.

To get started, head over to SearchWP » Algorithm.

Here, you’ll see a section for the different content types that SearchWP searches by default, such as pages, posts, and media files. Each section has its own Application Attribute Relevance sliders, which allows you to control how SearchWP ranks the content on your online marketplace, blog, or website.

For example, if you move the ‘Title’ slider to the left and the ‘Content’ slider to the right, then the content will carry more weight than the title.

You can even exclude specific pages, authors, and more from WordPress search.

Another option is to include more content in the search results by clicking on the ‘Sources & Settings’ button.

You can now check the box next to the different content types. For example, you may want to make blog comments searchable or add PDF indexing and searching in WordPress.

When you are happy with your changes, click on the ‘Done’ button.

This adds a new section for each new content type. You can now change the attribute relevance using the different sliders.

Once you are happy with how the search is set up, scroll to the top of the screen and click the ‘Save’ button.

SearchWP will now rebuild the index automatically. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection and your WordPress hosting provider, this may take a few minutes.

As soon as you see ‘Index Status 100%,’ you’ll know that SearchWP has indexed all your content and settings.

Add as Search By Category Feature to WordPress

After that, you’re ready to add a category selection option to the search form. This will allow visitors to choose the category they want to search.

To create this custom WordPress search form, you’ll need to add code to your WordPress website.

Often WordPress tutorials will ask you to add custom code to your theme’s functions.php file. However, this isn’t easy, and even a tiny mistake in the custom code snippet can cause common WordPress errors or even break your site completely.

With that in mind, we always recommend you add custom code in WordPress using the WPCode plugin. It is the best code snippet plugin for WordPress and lets you add custom PHP, CSS, and more with ease.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the free WPCode plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to Code Snippets » Add Snippet.

You will now see all the ready-made WPCode snippets you can add to your site. These include a snippet that allows you to completely disable comments, upload file types that WordPress doesn’t usually support, disable attachment pages, and much more.

Here, simply hover your mouse over ‘Add Your Custom Code’ and select ‘Use snippet.’

To start, type in a title for the custom code snippet. This can be anything that helps you identify the snippet in the WordPress dashboard.

After that, open the ‘Code Type’ dropdown and select ‘PHP Snippet.’

You can then add the following custom code in WordPress:

function my_searchwp_get_block_search_form_with_categories_dropdown( $block_content, $block ) {
 
    if ( 'core/search' !== $block['blockName'] ) {
        return $block_content;
    }
 
    ob_start(); ?>
    <form role="search" method="get" class="search-form" action="<?php echo home_url( '/' ); ?>">
        <label>
            <span class="screen-reader-text">Search For</span>
            <input type="search" class="search-field" placeholder="Search..." value="<?php echo esc_attr( get_search_query() ); ?>" name="s" title="Search for:" />
        </label>
        <?php
        // for more information see http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_dropdown_categories
        $swp_cat_dropdown_args = array(
            'show_option_all'  => __( 'Any Category' ),
            'name'             => 'swp_category_limiter',
        );
        wp_dropdown_categories( $swp_cat_dropdown_args );
        ?>
        <input type="submit" class="search-submit" value="Search" />
    </form>
    <?php return ob_get_clean();
}
 
add_filter( 'render_block', 'my_searchwp_get_block_search_form_with_categories_dropdown', 10, 2 );

After that, you are ready to scroll to the top of the screen and click on the ‘Inactive’ toggle so that it changes to ‘Active.’

Finally, click on ‘Save Snippet’ to make the PHP snippet live.

This code adds a category dropdown menu to all the search forms on your WordPress website. Simply visit your website to see the custom search bar in action.

With that done, you may want to continue improving the WordPress search feature by adding live Ajax search. You can also see our guide on how WordPress search works and tips to make it better.

We hoped this article helped you add search by category in WordPress. You may also want to see our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO tools and plugins that you should use or our guide on how to increase your blog traffic.

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