The original search script provided basic site search. Today, powerful search engines offer instant results, typo tolerance, and AI-powered relevance.
Site Search
Fast, typo-tolerant search engine optimized for instant search. Easy to use, no configuration needed. Built-in typo tolerance and filtering.
Lightning fast, open-source search engine. Instant search, typo tolerance, filters, faceting. RESTful API, easy integration.
Enterprise-grade distributed search engine. Full-text search, analytics, scalability. The standard for large-scale search applications.
High-performance full-text search engine. MySQL/MariaDB compatible, easy migration from Sphinx. Great for existing PHP apps.
Industry-leading hosted search platform. AI-powered relevance, analytics, A/B testing. Used by Stripe, Slack, and Twitch.
Managed Typesense hosting. All Typesense features without infrastructure management. Automatic scaling and backups.
Site search by Elastic. Easy setup, crawler-based indexing, analytics dashboard. No coding required for basic setup.
Fully static search library. Index at build time, search on client. Perfect for static sites, no server needed. ~100KB total.
Client-side full-text search. No external services, works offline. Build index at deploy time, search in browser.
Lightweight fuzzy-search library. No dependencies, works in browser and Node.js. Great for searching small datasets.
Premium WordPress search plugin. Custom weighting, PDF search, WooCommerce support.
Better WordPress search. Partial matches, fuzzy matching, custom excerpts.
| Feature | 1990s Script | Modern Engines |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Slow (file scan) | Instant (<50ms) |
| Typo tolerance | None | Built-in |
| Relevance | Keyword match | AI/ML ranking |
| Faceted search | No | Yes |
| Autocomplete | No | Instant |
| Analytics | None | Full tracking |
| Scalability | Limited | Millions of docs |
Small sites: Pagefind or Lunr.js
Self-hosted: Meilisearch or Typesense
Enterprise: Algolia or Elasticsearch
WordPress: Relevanssi