Jetpack Inline Search

Jetpack Inline Search is deprecated and we recommend all users switch to Jetpack Instant Search, our newer search solution. Check here for more details on Instant Search.

This information is preserved for our customers who are still using Inline Search, but we do plan on removing that option completely in the future.

Jetpack Inline Search indexes all WordPress posts, pages, and custom post types as long as the post status is one of ‘publish’, ‘trash’, ‘pending’, ‘draft’, ‘future’, or ‘private’.

An example sidebar showing filtering on a test site.

Get Inline Search on your site

Once you’ve connected your site, follow these steps to add Inline Search:

Go to WP Admin → Jetpack → Settings → Performance
Enable Search. Jetpack will then override the website’s default WordPress backend search system.
Keep the Enable instant search experience (recommended) toggle turned OFF.

Enable settings for Jetpack Inline Search, with an option to Add Jetpack Search Widget

Click Add Jetpack Search Widget to add Inline Search to your site using your theme’s customizer.
Choose the Widget area which you wish to display the Search Box. (Number and types of Widget areas will depend on your theme.)
Click Add a widget.
Select the Search (Jetpack) widget.

From there, you can also choose whether to display the search box or not, and whether to show the sorting selection dropdown. You can customize what post types to search and the default sort order. Finally, you can add custom filters that let your site visitors select category, tag, post format, date, post type, and so on.

Filters will only display in the widget on the search results page, after you perform a search.

When you add an extra filter to the widget – for example, to refine a search by taxonomy – the links for taxonomy terms will only appear in the search widget if there is at least one taxonomy term for the given results. Results with zero matching taxonomy terms will not show the filter controls. This is to prevent user confusion by having redundant controls taking up space on the screen.

Settings options for the Jetpack Inline Search widget

Post meta is not included in the index. Custom taxonomies are currently in the index, but the indexing structure has changed, so we do not recommend them for custom queries. For better post meta and custom taxonomy support, consider using Instant Search on your site.

For advanced customizations with relevant code snippets, see how to customize Inline Search.