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How To Limit Search Results For Specific Post Types in WordPress

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Have you ever wondered how you can limit your search results to specific post types? Its not very hard. We’ve already showed you how to disable the search feature in WordPress by modifying the functions.php file. Now we’re going to do the same thing except to filter our search results.

Open your functions.php file and add the following codes:

function searchfilter($query) {

    if ($query->is_search && !is_admin() ) {
        $query->set('post_type',array('post','page'));
    }

return $query;
}

add_filter('pre_get_posts','searchfilter');

Notice the line that says

$query->set('post_type',array('post','page'));

You can filter the search results by changing the values in the array variable. Right now it is set to display posts and pages but you can modify it to display anything you want.

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Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

27 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

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  2. Anna says

    Thanks for this code – it worked, although you last updated in 2013! My theme uses also an Instant Search and I would like to limit the results there aswell. How could I do that?

  3. Sparsh Goyal says

    My present theme shows post with few starting lines for searched term/word. I want to customise it to show that paragraph having searched term/word in post excerpt. In other words, I want to show related text in post excerpt not starting paragraph in search results. Can anyone help me to do this….

  4. Azamat says

    Hello,

    How can I limit search results for specific post types AND specific custom taxonomy terms?

  5. Steven says

    I’ve got an easy function in my themes functions.php file, which should only filter the Posts by a search term… when I search something now, the HTTP 500 Error “The website cannot display the page” appears. Anyone got an Idea, whats wrong with my function?

    function searchFilter($query) {
    if ($query->is_search)
    {
    wp_reset_query();
    $args = array ( ‘s’ => $_GET[‘s’] );
    query_posts( $args );
    }
    }
    add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’, ‘searchFilter’);

  6. Greg says

    This is restricting all search forms to the custom post type – including my sidebar searchform, which needs to return all results. This is working for me:

    function searchfilter($query) {
    if ($query->is_search && !is_admin() ) {
    if(isset($_GET[‘post_type’])) {
    $type = $_GET[‘post_type’];
    if($type == ‘book’) {
    $query->set(‘post_type’,array(‘book’));
    }
    }
    }
    return $query;
    }
    add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’,’searchfilter’);

    • Jonathan Joosten says

      Thanks for the assist, I improved your code so people can only search allowed post_types.

      function searchfilter($query)
      {
      if ($query->is_search && !is_admin() )
      {
      if(isset($_GET[‘post_type’])) {
      $types = (array) $_GET[‘post_type’];
      $allowed_types = get_post_types(array(‘public’ => true, ‘exclude_from_search’ => false));
      foreach($types as $type)
      {
      if( in_array( $type, $allowed_types ) ) { $filter_type[] = $type; }
      }
      if(count($filter_type))
      {
      $query->set(‘post_type’,$filter_type);
      }
      }
      }
      }
      add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’,’searchfilter’);

      • Dan Sz. says

        How is this implemented? If I’m reading Greg’s comment, correctly we want a single form that is limited to a post type, while keeping default search intact for other areas of the site.

        I’m asking because a site i’m working on needs a searchable “Resource Library”, which I’d like to build out with compromising the normal search functionality.

  7. Sandeep says

    Hi,

    I’m not able to restrict pages in search filter.
    I just need the search within the posts and not pages.

    $query->set(‘post_type’,array(‘post’));
    This displays pages too.

  8. Nick says

    I used this code to restrict my search results to Pages, not Posts. It worked in that regard, however, it seems to only search the Page names as opposed to content. For instance, if a user searches “pricing”, the Pricing page will be a result but if they search “price” or “cost” (both of which are words on the pricing page) nothing is found. Is there a snippet of code I’m missing?

  9. emre says

    Hi,
    I have a question and I couldn’t get a solution since last month.
    I have lost of categories, pages and re-directions in my blog so my search box finds many unnecessary results when you try to search something. I want to customize my search.php for only categories part. In other words, we you search something, the results should be only from categories sections. So I will be get rid of redundant & duplicated results. My current codes are as below…Please help me :)

  10. Felix says

    There’s one problem with your snippet:

    It limits the search results in the backend, you should wrap it with:


    if ( !is_admin() ) {
    // snippet
    }

  11. Alan Hughes says

    So how would you apply this to a specific search bar? It doesn’t just apply the filter to every search bar on your site would it?

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