With the rise of online shopping, customers’ expectations have also increased. They want instant search results that are relevant to their queries. Imagine a scenario where all the products on your eCommerce website are displayed on the front page. A page many kilometers long sounds like a scrolling nightmare, right? But this is the reality for many online stores that lack efficient search functionality. This is why we have product pages and categories. But an eCommerce website cannot survive on good architecture alone. It must have good search functionality too. Search helps people find their way. It helps in closing the sale quicker.
According to a study by AddSearch, 68% of shoppers wouldn’t return to a site that provided a poor search experience. That’s more than two-thirds of your potential customers go just because of an inefficient search function.
The search bar is more than just a tool; it’s a bridge between your customers and the products they’re looking for. A well-optimized search bar can significantly enhance the user experience and increase the chances of your store search results appearing at the top of the search engines, leading to higher conversion rates and increased sales.
In this article, we will explore the best Magento search extensions, both free and paid, that can help you enhance your Magento store’s search functionality.
Why Search Functionality in an Ecommerce Website is Important?
A robust and reliable store search equips customers with the power to effortlessly navigate through your online inventory and locate their desired product.
This creates a smooth shopping experience, which can enhance customer satisfaction and ultimately lead to higher conversion rates. It’s no secret that time is of prime importance for today’s consumers, who value speedy services above all else.
An optimized search process can dramatically reduce browsing times on your Magento store by delivering instant, accurate search results.
What are Magento Search Extensions?
Magento search extensions are add-ons for your Magento eCommerce platform that enhance the default search functionality. They are designed to make the search process faster, more accurate, and more user-friendly.
Why Do You Need Magento 2 Search Extensions?
Default Magento search functionality enables customers to find their interested products on your eCommerce store quickly. When a user enters a search query, this Magento module will search through your website’s database for the matching products based on the keywords used. The search algorithm considers various factors, such as the relevance of the product, the customer’s search history, and the frequency of the keyword on the website.
However, the default search function in Magento can sometimes be basic and may not provide the most relevant results. This is where Magento search extensions come in. They enhance the search functionality, offering features like autocomplete, instant search results, and advanced search filters. These extensions can handle complex queries and even correct typos, ensuring that your customers always find what they need.
How to Choose the Right Magento Search Extension?
Choosing the right Magento search extension for your online store can be a daunting task, given the myriad of options available. Here are some factors to consider while choosing a Magento search extension:
- Compatibility: Ensure that the search extension is compatible with your Magento version. Some extensions are designed for Magento 1.x, while others are for Magento 2.x.
- Features: Look for features that will enhance your customers’ search experience, such as autocomplete, instant search results, and the ability to handle spelling and typo errors.
- Ease of installation and use: The extension should be easy to install and integrate into your Magento site. It should also be user-friendly for both you and your customers.
- Support and updates: Choose an extension from a developer who offers good support and regular updates to ensure the extension stays compatible with the latest version of Magento.
- Price: While there are free Magento search extensions available, some paid extensions offer more advanced features. Consider your budget and the return on investment the extension could provide.
- User Reviews: User reviews can provide valuable insights into the performance and reliability of the search extension. Look for extensions with positive reviews and high ratings.
Top Free Magento Search Extensions
1. Magento 2 Auto Search by Landofcoder
The Magento 2 Auto Search Extension by Landofcoder is a powerful tool designed to enhance the search functionality of your eCommerce store. This extension uses AJAX technology to deliver search results as soon as users start typing, making the search process faster and more efficient.
Features
- Search as you type from the first typed character
- AJAX Search with lightning-fast speed
- Search Autocomplete & Relevant Suggestions
- Trending Keyword Suggestion
- Optimized search for phones and tablets
- Magento 2 Search Autocomplete with Filter Categories
- Customized Appearance
- Support for right-to-left languages
- Display ADD TO CART Button directly in search results
- New Auto-search Options for ves blog, ves brand, cms pages, lof faq questions
Compatibility
This extension is compatible with Magento Editions: 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x.
Pricing: Free
User reviews
2. Search Autocomplete for Magento 2 by Mageworx
The Search Autocomplete extension for Magento 2 by Mageworx is a free tool that enhances the search functionality of your eCommerce store. It leverages AJAX technology to display instant search results in a customizable pop-up, allowing customers to make purchases directly from the search box.
Features
- Customizable AJAX pop-up for instant search results
- The “Add to Cart” button directly in the search results
- Display of product image, SKU, price, reviews/ratings, etc. in the results
- Advanced search customization options
- Seamless website performance
- Autocomplete search with as-you-type suggestions
- Instant search results
- Predicts customer queries based on the characters they have entered
- Allows purchases directly from the search results pop-up
- Composer installation for easier extensions installation and management
Compatibility
This extension is compatible with Magento CE 2.1.x – 2.4.x; EE 2.1.x – 2.4.x.
Pricing: Free
User reviews
3. Instant Search+ by Fast Simon
Fast Simon’s Instant Search+ is a powerful Magento search extension that’s designed to maximize conversion rates. Trusted by over 20,000 fast-growing eCommerce sites, this extension is built for large eCommerce platforms and is backed by world-class support. It’s a certified Innovate Exchange Partner of Magento, so you can rest assured that you’re in good hands.
Features
- Advanced Search Functionality: Provide your users with exactly what they’re looking for with features like search filters, mobile-optimized search, “Did You Mean & Related Searches”, A/B testing, and natural language search.
- AI-Based Instant Search: Includes smart auto-complete, typo & auto-correction, auto synonyms and antonyms, and visual search & complete the look.
- Enterprise Readiness: Manage multiple stores from one dashboard, assign multiple users to access the dashboard, and enjoy enterprise-grade high-availability cloud infrastructure & CDN.
- Smart Merchandising: Display the most relevant products according to your business needs with advanced merchandising features.
- Deep Magento Open Source Integration: Maximize conversion rate with Fast Simon for Magento with features like customer groups, B2B search, and SKU search.
Compatibility
Fast Simon’s Instant Search + is compatible with Magento Open Source, but they also offer a version for Magento Commerce (Adobe Commerce).
Pricing
Fast Simon offers a range of pricing options to suit different needs:
- Basic: Free
- Starter: $166.99/mo (billed annually)
- Essential: $249.99/mo (billed annually)
- Top Pro: $416.99/mo (billed annually)
- Growth: $833.99/mo (billed annually)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Each plan offers a different set of features and capabilities, with the higher-tier plans offering more advanced features like advanced merchandising, personalized shopping experiences, and more frequent sync frequency (indexing).
User reviews
Top Paid Magento Search Extensions
1. Amasty Advanced Search
Amasty Advanced Search is a Magento 2 search extension designed to enhance the shopping experience on your eCommerce website. It provides a smooth navigation experience, helping customers quickly find their desired products. The extension shows related, recent, and popular keywords to upsell via a flexibly customizable autocomplete popup. It is designed to bridge the gap between a customer and the desired product, speeding up the purchasing decision process on your website.
Features
- Predictive Search Results: The extension shows a perfect match even before the keyword is fully typed in, significantly shortening a user’s path to an item and, thus to a purchase.
- Multiple Results Sources: It provides search results based on CMS pages and categories to provide site visitors with more comprehensive lookup results.
- Search by Product Attributes: This extension allows you to include any available product attribute in the lookup algorithm, optimizing search quality with additional info blocks.
- ‘Add to Cart’ Button in Search Popup: While customers are navigating, there’s an opportunity for you to catch their spontaneous intentions to buy. Display the ‘Add to Cart’ button next to the product right in the search autocomplete and suggest a popup to let users purchase necessary products right away.
- Recent and Popular Search Terms: Offer shoppers navigating through the store and exploring their bestsellers by showing the most popular keywords.
- User-Friendly Results Display: When a user presses ‘Enter’ to see the lookup results, they’ll be displayed in a user-friendly box with several tabs available. The tabs help buyers quickly understand a source from where the result is coming, e.g., a product page or a CMS page.
- Browsing History: This feature helps site visitors take their site browsing flow under control by allowing them to get back to their recent lookup results anytime.
- Promote Bestsellers: Use the Magento search tools to boost sales of your bestsellers and increase the value of the average check per customer.
- Built-in Analytics: Use analytics to know more about what customers look for more often. Get a better understanding of users’ engagement, see the number of unique and total results, and improve the performance of your Magento extended search.
- Customizable Layout: The Magento search solution allows you to customize colors for each window element according to your needs. Use a color picker to select the necessary tint in seconds. Indicate the window width in pixels to make it fit in with other page elements.
Compatibility: Magento 2.x
Pricing
The Amasty Advanced Search extension is priced at $249 for the community edition. For pricing details of other Magento editions, visit their official website.
User reviews
2. Advanced Search for Magento 2 by MageAnts
Advanced Search for Magento 2 by MageAnts is a premium Magento search extension that provides a fast and efficient search experience. This extension offers autocomplete suggestions and instant search results, making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.
Features
- Easy to configure the Advanced Search extension
- Autocomplete configuration is available
- Admin can customize the search specifications
- Ability to determine the products that can be placed under the search
- Customizable layout for the search
- Displays an automatic popup in the front-end
- Shows related, bestsellers, and recent searches in the autocomplete popup
- Flexible and customizable extension
- Auto popup when added to the store page
- Satisfies customers by quickly finding the necessary products
Compatibility:
This extension is compatible with Magento Version 2.x
Pricing
The pricing of Advanced Search For Magento 2 by MageAnts starts at $89. For pricing details of other Magento editions, visit their official website.
User reviews
3. Mageplaza Ajax Search
Mageplaza Ajax Search is a Magento 2 search extension that enhances the functionality of your store’s search tool. It employs AJAX technology to provide ultra-fast and relevant search results in a user-friendly interface. As soon as customers start typing in the search box, auto-complete search results appear, helping them find the right products quickly. This not only improves the shopping experience but also boosts sales. With quicker server load and flexible configuration, this extension eliminates any issues you might have in creating an efficient internal search engine, an effective promotion campaign, and a seamless shopping experience.
Features
- Auto-Complete Search Results: The extension shows auto-complete search results as soon as customers start typing in the search box, providing a quick and efficient search experience.
- AJAX Technology: Powered by AJAX technology, the extension offers ultra-fast and relevant search results.
- Enable Search in Categories: The extension allows customers to search for more precise results. An additional dropdown box appears next to the text search field, with multiple levels to choose from.
- Flexible Configuration: The extension offers flexible configuration options. You can choose ‘After Product Save’ for less than 3,000 products, ‘Cronjob’ if your store has more than 3,000 SKUs, or ‘Manually’, which means clicking the Reindex button when the product’s information changes.
- User-Friendly Interface: The extension has a user-friendly interface that enhances the shopping experience for customers.
- Improved Shopping Experience: By helping customers find the right products quickly, the extension improves the overall shopping experience and can boost sales.
- Quicker Server Load: The extension is designed for quick server load, ensuring smooth and efficient operation of your online store.
Compatibility
Mageplaza Ajax Search is compatible with Magento 2.
Pricing
The Price of Mageplaza’s Magento 2 search extension starts at $149. For more pricing details, please visit the official Mageplaza Ajax Search webpage.
User Reviews
4. Magenest Ajax Search
Magenest Ajax Search is a powerful Magento 2 search extension that aims to enhance customers’ experience by providing instant and relevant search results. This extension is designed to simplify the customer journey by offering a user-friendly interface and quick access to desired products. It also introduces a new feature – Voice Search, which allows customers to use voice commands to search for their desired items.
Features
- Voice Search Capability: This new feature allows customers to use voice commands to search for their desired items. The smart algorithm of the extension converts the voice into text, and visitors can see the results right after they finish speaking.
- Auto Completion: The extension provides suitable search suggestions based on customers’ keywords. Visitors don’t need to go back and forth to search with other related keywords. They can simply click the links on the suggestion box to redirect to the wanted page.
- Reduced Searching Time: The Ajax search box allows customers to see search results as they type, reducing the time waiting for the page to refresh.
- Customizable Search Box: Merchants can easily customize the products shown in the search results and the search box to satisfy buyers’ needs.
- Optimized Header and Footer: The header and footer of the suggestion box can be utilized as a fast and effective way of communication. Admins can change the content and color of the header and footer to impress customers.
- Customizable Search Results: Merchants can choose which kind of product details will appear on the search results, including price, product image, and product description.
- Category Filter: The extension allows adding a category filter for the search box.
- Sorting by ‘New’ Products: Merchants can sort the search results by ‘new’ products.
Compatibility
The Magenest Ajax Search is compatible with Magento 2.3.x, 2.4.x (Open Source and Commerce).
Pricing
The price of the Magenest Ajax Search extension starts at $49.00, with additional costs for extended support and installation services.
For pricing details of all Magento editions, visit their official website.
User Reviews
5. Magento 2 Search Autocomplete & Suggest Extension by Plumrocket
The Search Autocomplete & Suggest Extension for Magento 2 by Plumrocket is a powerful tool designed to enhance the search functionality of your Magento store. This extension is built with a focus on improving the user experience by providing accurate and fast search results. It’s a crucial component that can significantly lower bounce rates due to inaccurate results and increase conversions and sales.
Features
- Improved Search Results: This extension uses a new AJAX search suggestions algorithm to provide improved search results, helping customers find exactly what they’re looking for.
- Comprehensive Search: The extension allows search by all product attributes, tags, and catalogs, ensuring a comprehensive search experience.
- Detailed Product Suggestions: It displays product search suggestions with thumbnails, prices, ratings, and short descriptions, providing users with a quick overview of the product.
- Support for All Magento 2 Search Engines: It seamlessly integrates with all Magento 2 Search Engines, including MySQL, Elastic Search, and Elasticsearch 5.0+.
- Catalog Dropdown Filter: This feature allows users to narrow down search results by category name. Admins can also hide specific categories from the filter if needed.
- Keyword and Category Suggestions: Admins can enable keyword and category suggestions from the Magento 2 backend, enhancing the search experience for users.
- Mobile-Friendly: This extension works great on all devices, from PCs to tablets and mobiles, ensuring a consistent user experience across all platforms.
Compatibility
The Search Autocomplete & Suggest Extension is compatible with Magento 2 versions 2.3.X – 2.4.6.
Pricing
The Search Autocomplete & Suggest Extension for Magento 2 by Plumrocket is priced at $99.00.
User Reviews
6. Magento 2 ElasticSearch Suite by Mirasvit
Elastic Search Ultimate by Mirasvit is a powerful Magento 2 extension designed to enhance the search functionality of your online store. It is engineered to provide customers with highly relevant search results within milliseconds, significantly improving the user experience and potentially boosting conversion rates. The extension is compatible with ElasticSearch 7., 8., OpenSearch, and Sphinx Search, making it a versatile choice for diverse eCommerce platforms.
Features
- High-Speed Search: Elastic Search Ultimate delivers super-fast search results using autocomplete, ensuring customers can find what they’re looking for in no time.
- Typing Error Correction: The extension automatically corrects typing errors during a search, reducing the chances of zero results and improving the overall search experience.
- Search Across Multiple Content Types: Elastic Search Ultimate allows customers to search across various content types, including products, categories, and CMS pages, among others.
- Responsive & Mobile-Friendly Interface: The extension is designed to be fully responsive and mobile-friendly, ensuring a seamless user experience across all devices.
- Search Weights: This feature allows you to forcibly move positions of items in search to promote or demote specific products.
- Score Boost Rules: Increase the search ranking of products with Score Boost Rules. Move certain products to the top or bottom of the search output with flexible conditions.
- Synonyms and Stopwords: The extension increases search relevance by extending native Magento search functionality on synonyms and excluding words with little or ambiguous lexical meaning.
- Search Landing Pages: Show a landing page instead of the regular search results for specific search queries to give customers faster what they want.
- Reports: The extension offers powerful analytics of your store search. You can use the following reports: Report by search terms, which shows the most popular search terms in your store, and Report by search volume, which shows the number of search terms and engagement.
Compatibility
Elastic Search Ultimate is compatible with Magento Community versions 2.3.x – 2.4.6 and Magento Enterprise versions 2.3.x – 2.4.6.
Pricing
The extension is priced at $249 for the Magento Community edition. For the Magento Enterprise edition, an additional $199 is required. The purchase includes lifetime access to the source code, free support and updates for one year, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
User Reviews
How to Optimize Your Magento Store’s Search Performance?
Optimizing your Magento store’s search performance is crucial for improving the user experience and boosting your sales. Here are some tips to optimize your Magento store’s search performance:
- Monitor Your Search Performance: Regularly monitor your search performance to identify any issues or areas of improvement. Use tools like Google Analytics to track your search performance.
- Test Your Search Functionality: Regularly test your search functionality to ensure that it is working correctly. Check for issues like slow loading times, inaccurate search results, and poor user interface.
- Update Your Product Catalog Regularly: Regularly update your product catalog to ensure that all the products are correctly categorized and have accurate descriptions. This can help in improving the search results.
- Use High-Quality Images: High-quality images can make your products more appealing and can help in improving the search results. Ensure that your product images are clear, high-resolution, and accurately represent the product.
- Optimize Your Site’s Speed: Site speed plays a crucial role in search performance. If your site takes too long to load, it can affect the search results and lead to a poor user experience. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to check your site’s speed and get recommendations for speed optimization.
Final Thoughts
Magento search extensions are powerful tools that can significantly enhance the search functionality of your Magento store. They provide fast, accurate, and relevant search results, making the search process more efficient and user-friendly. Whether you choose a free or paid extension, the key is to choose one that best fits your store’s needs and budget. With the right Magento search extension, you can improve the user experience, boost your sales, and take your Magento store to the next level.
Remember, the search functionality of your Magento store is not just a tool; it’s a bridge between your customers and the products they’re looking for. So, invest in a good Magento search extension and make the search process a breeze for your customers.
Best Magento Search Extensions in 2023 (Free & Paid)