In my earlier audit, I ran 23 searches through WordPress’s built-in search on this blog. Seven of them returned nothing, even though a matching post existed. I promised to run the same 23 again once this blog had an AI search. This is that WordPress search vs AI site search comparison, before and after.
The short version: the post I wanted now comes first for 21 of the 23 searches and second for the other 2, including all 7 that WordPress missed. It isn’t flawless, and I’ll show where it isn’t.
Full disclosure: I am a tech enthusiast at WhooshPro, which makes Breezy AI Search, and that’s the search I put on this blog. Weigh what follows accordingly. It’s also why I’m showing the misses and the noise.
How I ran it
I ran the same 23 searches, worded exactly as before, and judged each one by where the post I expected ranked.
- Before: WordPress’s own search, run against the published posts and pages.
- After: Breezy AI Search, called the same way the search box on this site calls it.
- Fair test: the audit post quotes most of these searches, so I took it out of the search index while I ran them, then put it back.
- How I judged it: Breezy returns a long list, between 17 and 30 results for every search, so counting results says nothing. I looked at the rank of the post I expected instead.
The result
The post I wanted came first for 21 of the 23 searches and second for the other 2.
- The 7 that WordPress missed: the right post is in the top 3 for all 7. It’s first for 6 and second for 1.
- The other 16: the right post is in the top 3 for all 16. It’s first for 15 and second for 1.
- The noise is gone. WordPress returned five posts for “ssl”, and two of them were unrelated because “ssl” sits inside the word “hassle”. Breezy’s top three for “ssl” are the three SSL posts.
The seven that WordPress missed
Each of these fell into one of the four causes from the audit: a different word form, a synonym, an abbreviation, or a differently phrased question.
- “real estate investment trust” found my REIT post, which never spells the term out. It came second, behind my post on SGX dividend stocks (a score of 2.02 against 1.95).
- “move ssl certificate to a new server” found the SSL move post first, though that post says “moving”.
- “jogging route” put three of my four running posts in the top three, with Run at Marina Bay first. I wrote “run”, never “jog”.
- “running shoes” and “sneakers” both found the Nike Dualtone Racer review first, though it only says “shoe”.
- “cant connect to sql server remotely” found the SQL Server remote connections post first, despite the missing apostrophe and “remotely” instead of “remote”.
- “seo checklist” found my practical SEO tutorial first, though I called it a tutorial.
Where it still falls short
It isn’t perfect, and a few things are worth knowing before you trust a result like this.
- Two searches put the right post second. One is “real estate investment trust”, above. The other is “parking”, where a running post scored 2.49 and my Parking.sg app review scored 2.46.
- The lower slots have weak matches. Unrelated posts often fill places two and three. Some of my site’s own pages get in too: for “passive income”, places two and three were category archive pages, and the home page turned up in the top three for four other searches. I’ve left the home page and category pages in the index for now, so that noise is still there.
- It’s a small test. I hand-picked the 23 searches to expose WordPress’s weak spots, and I ran them once. The scores are Breezy’s own, and I don’t know of a threshold that says a match is good.
What happens when the blog can’t answer
I tried one search by hand that this blog can’t answer: “do you know about chicken rice?” The answer said the site doesn’t seem to cover that topic, which is true. Below it, the search still lists its closest pages. I’ve left that on deliberately, since a visitor may still want one of them. That’s one example, not a test.
A practical catch: new posts aren’t searchable straight away
Breezy can only search pages it has discovered. It rescans my site monthly, or right away if I paste one page’s address into its dashboard. So a brand-new post isn’t searchable until one of those happens.
What I’d take from this
If your WordPress search misses things, do the cheap fixes from the audit first: put your visitors’ words on your pages and start recording what they search for. When the misses are about meaning, such as abbreviations, synonyms, other word forms and differently phrased questions, patching pages one phrase at a time stops paying off. That’s the case where an AI search earned its place on my blog.
If you’d like to try it on your own site, you can try Breezy AI Search. Or start with the audit, which needs no special tools.
