Our theme Directory comes with lots of features using which you can build an online Directory site very easily. One of the important and eye catching feature is “Instant Search”.

Any Directory becomes most useful only when people can find easily for what they are looking for. Automatically more uses will be attracted to use the site. It will become popular when it is very handy to find relevant businesses from a Directory site.

Instant Search provides the very same thing. It is very useful in making Directory site more useful for site users and visitors. It shows the suggestions while person is trying to search something on the site.

This is how the instant search will display results as you type:

Back-end settings:

There are different options using which search can be made to fit as per requirement of the site. It is a widget named “T > Instant Search” that can be accessed from your WP-admin –> Appearance>> Widgets. This widget is generally placed in to “Header” widget area.

I will explain here some of the important options of the widget which will help you to decide how to set up the search on the site to make the Directory site – An easy-to-find solution!

Show exact results:

If you want to show exact results for what people are looking, you can enable the option “Search with exact match conditions?” in to that widget.

For example: There is a listing named “Restaurants”, when searching for “Restaurant” word, listing will not be displayed if this option is enabled.

Enabling this option can be beneficial as well as it has drawbacks.

Show listings from current city:

Enable option “Search from current city” for this. This can be enabled if you want to show search results from current city only which user is surfing on the site.

Address:

Last but very important field. I guess every Directory site should have enabled this option in their search. I explain how it is possible:

When I am looking for properties in London or London’s area I will type “apartment in London” OR “apartment in Green Lanes”. This will provide the correct business details what the site visitor is looking for.

Categories & Tags:

There are two other options in to the widget which should be enabled as people like me just type in the category name of a product. I personally do this when I search for any product/post on any site.

I hope this answers a lot of questions about the Instant widget in the Directory theme.