How Brands Can Use Smart Search AI With AI-Powered Recommendations for Better UX and Business Outcomes

Having a business website is the bare minimum for any modern brand. It’s only once a user lands on your site that the real adventure begins.

Modern web users expect accessibility. They want the ability to quickly find and consume the content they need, whether it’s your company mission on the About page or product information deep within the archives of an eCommerce site. Fostering the end user’s ability to find relevant results for their queries is critical to keeping them engaged and pushing them toward conversion.

When visitors can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll quickly move on to a competitor that can deliver. In fact, average user time on a website is just 15 seconds, so ensuring your site meets the growing expectation for fast, intelligent, personalized on-site experiences fosters better performance and engagement metrics and positions your site as a reliable source for relevant information.

That’s where WP Engine’s Smart Search AI with AI-powered Recommendations comes into play. It’s the modern search solution built specifically for WordPress^Ⓡ, helping site owners, brands, agencies, and businesses deliver better, more relevant on-site search results.

Read on to learn why WordPress’ inherent search capabilities aren’t robust enough to meet the needs of modern users, how Smart Search AI is revolutionizing on-site search for WordPress, and how this simple-to-set-up, fully integrated tool can improve performance and engagement for a wide range of business and site types.

Why traditional WordPress^® search isn’t enough

WordPress has long been the low-cost, user-friendly CMS chosen by the majority of site owners and developers on the web. Unfortunately, its search functionality has not improved alongside the growth of the platform.

While WordPress is ideal for posting and publishing content, its built-in search has some glaring limitations. By default, WordPress search:

• Only covers exact keyword matching between a user’s input and the results it returns.
• Has no semantic understanding or natural language capabilities, meaning a simple spelling error from your user is enough to eliminate the most relevant results for their query.
• Lacks personalization and real-time relevance, prioritizing older, more established posts over current, more relevant information.
• Lacks in-depth search insights to help you make informed decisions for your site.
• Does not recognize synonyms or variations of words. For example, if a user inputs “run,” WordPress’ inherent search would not return results for “running” or “ran.”
• Can be slow to return results on sites with a larger volume of content.

To put it simply, WordPress’ inherent search functionality doesn’t understand language the way humans do. 

Improving the search results served up by your website requires more than WordPress can provide out of the box. But this begs the question: Does it make business sense to invest time and money into your website’s search experience?

Business impact: Why search matters for conversions and revenue

43% of website visitors who arrive on a site with a specific intention in mind will head straight to its search bar, according to Coveo’s 2025 CX Relevance Report.

Additionally, 53% cited “not being able to easily search for and find the information I’m looking for on my own” as the biggest problem they have with self-serving on a site.

Both marketers and consumers see companies as having significant room for improving consistency across the customer experience in relation to personalized recommendations based on user behavior, according to a recent study conducted by The Harris Poll.

So, it stands to reason that improving the relevance of search results across your website is one of the easiest ways to improve the overall consistency and quality of your customers’ experiences—not to mention your site’s conversions.

The simple solution: Smart Search AI with AI-Powered Recommendations

WP Engine’s Smart Search AI with AI-Powered Recommendations goes beyond traditional search functionality by incorporating semantic search and machine learning, allowing systems to better understand and interpret user queries and deliver results that truly align with user intent.

Here’s a closer look at what Smart Search AI brings to your site:

• Semantic search: Improve interpretation of natural language and vague queries to deliver more relevant results.
• Personalized, auto-updating recommendations: Recommend trending and related content or products based on real user behavior to increase engagement and cross-selling opportunities.
• Advanced query processing: Effortlessly handle complex search phrases to ensure users find exactly what they’re looking for.
• GPT-like user experience: Implement the sophistication of AI-driven responses on your site without impacting server performance.
• In-depth analytics: Get detailed insights into search behaviors that you can use to refine your content strategy.
• Lightning-fast results: Offload site search to a specialized AI search server to keep your site performing at its peak, even while handling a large volume of customer queries.

Additionally, custom filters and faceted search capabilities allow your users to refine their results, sorting by categories like size or price to make your site’s search even more user-friendly.

Smart Search AI is also fully compatible with WP Engine’s suite of additional tools and products, including Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), as well as many tools popular in the WordPress community, like WooCommerce^®, the block editor, and WPGraphQL, making it ideal for media-rich and content-heavy websites.

With these powerful capabilities enabled, on-site search transforms from a basic utility into an intuitive tool, empowering site visitors to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for—and maybe a few additional items to boot!

Built for WordPress^®: A faster, more scalable Search Solution

WP Engine prioritized ease of use and rapid deployment for sites of all types and sizes to ensure that getting started with Smart Search AI is as straightforward as possible.

Setup happens in minutes, not weeks, with a simple three-click setup that provides immediate access to an intuitive UI. No-code and low-code options allow for quick implementation, while deeper developer features are available for technical teams in need of more customization. This flexibility allows both agencies and in-house developers to deploy powerful search solutions for their clients with remarkable speed and efficiency.

Predictable pricing and simplified management directly from your hosting provider also eliminates the need for additional third-party relationships to maintain and tools to configure. Choosing one tool from a vendor you already trust can help you avoid the headaches often associated with complicated integrations and managing invoicing from multiple vendors.

Once implemented, Smart Search AI is truly a set-it-and-forget-it solution. The system continually indexes and updates your site content in the background, ensuring search results and recommendations are always fresh, accurate, and reflective of your latest offerings or content.

There is no ongoing manual reconfiguration or performance tuning required, allowing developers to focus on more impactful projects while resting assured that their WordPress site search functionality is always showcasing the most relevant products and content.

Real-world applications for Smart Search AI with AI-Powered Recommendations

Smart Search AI is particularly beneficial for websites that rely heavily on effective content discovery and user engagement. For example:

• eCommerce sites: Help customers quickly find products and discover related items to drive more sales.
• Learning Management Systems (LMSs): Enhance students’ ability to locate courses, modules, and resources to enhance their learning journeys.
• Media, news, and content sites: Help users find articles, videos, and other media that align with their interests to increase engagement time (while boosting your ad revenue and click-through rates!).

By streamlining search and recommendations, WP Engine’s Smart Search AI tool empowers a diverse range of site owners to more easily achieve their core business objectives.

WP Engine’s AI Toolkit

WP Engine’s AI Toolkit combines Smart Search AI with AI-Powered Recommendations and a Managed Vector Database to supercharge site performance and improve user experiences across the board.

Learn more about the other half of the toolkit, or learn more about the full toolkit right here!

Chart the fastest path to relevant results with Smart Search AI

Smart Search AI with AI-powered Recommendations is the easiest way to modernize your site and deliver value to users without introducing ongoing development requirements or surprise costs.

Ready to transform your site’s search and engagement with AI? Add Smart Search AI with AI-powered Recommendations to your WP Engine plan today!