relevanssin

Relevansnin is the Finnish genitive form of relevanssi and is often used in Finnish texts to refer to the concept of relevance or to the WordPress search plugin commonly known as Relevanssi. Relevanssi is a WordPress search plugin designed to replace the default site search with a relevance-based engine that aims to return more meaningful results for users.

The plugin expands indexing beyond posts and pages to include custom post types, comments, categories, tags, and many custom fields. By indexing a wider set of content, it enables search results that better reflect what users are likely seeking. It can also index attachments and metadata, depending on configuration, and provides options for excluding or weighting certain content.

Ranking and querying features are central to Relevanssi. It uses a scoring system that considers term frequency and document frequency, with adjustable weighting that can boost specific content types, fields, or taxonomies. It supports stemming, synonyms, and stop words, as well as phrase and boolean queries. Results can highlight matched terms and can be arranged by relevance or by other criteria chosen in the settings.

Configuration and maintenance are handled through the WordPress admin area. Administrators can choose what to index, perform reindexing, adjust word-length thresholds, and fine-tune search behavior. The plugin is designed to work with standard caching and hosting environments; on very large sites, indexing can require significant server resources, and some users supplement it with external search backends or alternative plugins.

See also: WordPress search plugins, ElasticSearch, SearchWP.