Site search used to mean picking between whatever your theme renders and a separate overlay UI that doesn’t always match the rest of your site. Jetpack Search Blocks project closes that gap. This release ships with two brand-new search experiences — Embedded and the blocks-powered Overlay — both built from real WordPress blocks, both styled by your theme. Pick the one that fits your site, edit it in the block editor, and you’re done.
A search experience that fits your site
For years, “site search” meant a compromise. The theme-rendered results page gives you native styling but limited control over filters, sort, and layout. The classic Instant Search overlay gives you fast, filterable results but lives in a parallel UI that doesn’t always match your site.
Search new experiences take a different approach. Both new experiences are composed from a single set of search blocks — search input, filters, sort, results list, load-more — that you arrange, style, and edit just like any other block on your site. The result is a search experience that uses your fonts, your colors, and your spacing out of the box.
Meet the two new experiences
Embedded search. A full search page rendered inline in your theme. Visitors land on a real URL, search-as-you-type, and see filters, sort, and load-more on the same page. The template lives in your theme’s search.html on block themes, or a built-in fallback template on classic themes, so it follows the rest of your site naturally.
Blocks-powered Overlay (beta). A modal-style overlay that opens on top of the current page when a visitor triggers search. Same Search Blocks framework as Embedded — same blocks, same styling — just rendered in an overlay container instead of taking over the page. Good for sites that prefer the quick-search pattern but want it styled to match.
How to pick which
Both experiences are mutually exclusive on the search route — pick one in the Experience Selector and that experience takes over. A rough guide:
- Embedded is the right fit when you want search results to feel like a native page in your theme. Real URLs, bookmarkable, indexable, and the page is yours to design.
- Blocks-powered Overlay is the right fit when you’d rather keep visitors on the page they’re reading. Same blocks, same styling, just delivered as a modal.
The classic Instant Search overlay — the original quick-search experience some sites already use — is still fully supported and available alongside the new options in the Experience Selector. Over time, as the blocks-powered Overlay matures, we expect it to become the recommended path. For now, sites can stay on the classic Overlay as long as they want.
Editable in the block editor
Both new experiences are template-driven and editable. Open the search template in the block editor, rearrange the filters, swap the empty state, add a hero above the results, customize the load-more button — it’s all blocks, in the same editor you already use for posts and pages. Save once, and that’s what visitors see.
Availability
Jetpack Search new experience options ship with Jetpack 15.9 / Jetpack 7.0 and is already live on WordPress.com Simple sites. Both new experiences are available out of the box on any site with a Jetpack Search plan — no opt-in filter, no extra setup. Open the Search dashboard, choose Embedded or the new Overlay, save, and you’re done.
How did this ship so fast?
The new Search experiences were built during Automattic’s Radical Speed Month — a four-week sprint where two engineers used AI pair-coding to land 140+ PRs and 20 new blocks.
Search that fits your site, starting today
If you’ve been waiting for site search that looks like the rest of your site — and behaves like a real part of your editor — this is the release. Pick the experience that fits, edit the template, and ship.
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