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How to Highlight Search-Result in WordPress

Snippets by IsItWP

Are you looking for a way to highlight search result in WordPress? While there’s probably a plugin for this, we have created a quick code snippet that you can use to highlight search result in WordPress.

Instructions:

All you have to do is add this code to your theme’s search.php file:

<?php
// Replace the_exerpt() with:
$excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
$keys = explode(" ",$s);
$excerpt = preg_replace('/('.implode('|', $keys) .')/iu', '<strong class="search-excerpt"></strong>', $excerpt);
echo $excerpt;
?>

Note: If this is your first time adding code snippets in WordPress, then please refer to our guide on how to properly add code snippets in WordPress, so you don’t accidentally break your site.

If you liked this code snippet, please consider checking out our other articles on the site like: 43 best photography themes for WordPress and how to fix the error establishing a database connection in WordPress.

Comments   Leave a Reply

  1. This code doesn’t work, it removes the search terms from the excerpt!

    ‘<strong class="search-excerpt"></strong>’ should be ‘<strong class="search-excerpt">\0</strong>’ to actually show the search terms

  2. This Code breaks the native excerpt link into this visible link and code:

    … /” class=”more-link”>continue

    As you can see you need to configure the code to be within the originally excerpt at the same time it highlights the search terms. Now it’s not good.

    Kindly Lillan

    1. We are not seeing a broken link. That said, are you referring to a link in the excerpt or the post link itself?

      1. Lillian is correct, this messes up the more-link in excerpts if the search term is found in the link itself e.g. in the page slug

        1. I’ll ask the editor about this.

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