Content Blocks content is not found by Search

  • Hello!

    I’m currently using Content Blocks to help organize a lot of the site content for the ease of use on the client’s end. So I have sections organized by Content blocks and then called into a single page using a custom page template.

    However, it seems because the content is called in separately from the page, it seems Search cannot find the content. If you try to search for a city, you’ll notice that the Resources page doesn’t show up in the Search results (even though it has a whole section for all the cities).

    Any ideas how I can get the Content Blocks to load at the right time or how to get them to show up for searches?

    I’ve tried with the standard search and also tried using the Relevanssi plugin to help, neither has worked. It’s not the Accordions plugin because I’ve tested moving the accordion content onto the main page content and it can be found.

    Thanks so much for your help!

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author Johan van der Wijk

    (@vanderwijk)

    This is a known issue with the WordPress search engine. Google will be able to pick up the content blocks, but the internal WordPress search engine queries the database and to prevent duplicate content issues with Google (not sure if that is still a thing in 2018), I have disabled direct access to the content blocks.

    You can experiment with changing line 138 from the plugin file post-widget.php from 'exclude_from_search' => true, to 'exclude_from_search' => false, which might help.

    Thread Starter alamcp

    (@alamcp)

    Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately didn’t work.

    Is there anyway to get the internal search engine to see the called content as part of the page it’s on?

    This is a pretty significant issue for calling in other pages/using content blocks if the internal search won’t be able to find it ): I was really hoping that the content blocks could provide a cleaner and less breakable editing area for clients.

    Any other ideas?

    Thread Starter alamcp

    (@alamcp)

    Still no luck figuring out this thing.

    If I allow Relevanssi to index the Content Blocks, it will also show each separate Content Block as it’s own page, which is not ideal. Is there anyway to have Relevanssi index something but not display it? Or rather, is there a way for the Content Blocks content to be associated to the page it’s being called on, rather than being displayed as separate pages when showing as search results?

    Essentially like the way Google search would work? I tried to install a custom Google search but of course that displays ads, so I can’t use it, but otherwise it functions the way I’d like the WP search to work.

    Appreciate any insights/suggestions!

    Plugin Author Johan van der Wijk

    (@vanderwijk)

    As far as I know most WordPress search solutions directly query the database to find content. This means that it is not possible to find texts in content blocks that are embedded in posts or pages as the database entry only shows the shortcode.

    As you mentioned, Google works differently as it scans the generated page and therefore sees all the content on a page, including the texts from content blocks. It seems that Google has discontinued their Site Search service, but you might be able to find an alternative in this article: https://searchengineland.com/google-site-search-way-now-271366

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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