Excluded category posts showing in results

Hi,

The most common mistake is, that the wrong exclusion box is used. Make sure to use the one on the advanced options panel.

If that does not help, then does the exclusions show up in the live results list? If the live results list is correct and the items only show up on the results page, then try enabling the soft check option and turning ON the search override.

All the best,
Ernest

Hi and thank you for your help.

I hadn’t found the Exclude Results tab under Advanced. Using that panel my excluded Category is successfully removed from the live loading results, but not the results page. I tried also excluding the Category in the Frontend Filter tab panel.

Turning on compatibility soft check (with Search override on) made no difference unfortunately.

The live-loading results are excellent, with excluded category, images, context relevant extracted text and search word highlighting, but the results page has none of those features. Is it possible for the live-loading results to appear on the clicked results pages?

Hi,

Thank you for the detailed check. Do you have any other search plugin active by any chance, that could cause this problem – as they may want to perpetually override each other.

If not, then it is very likely that the results page has a manual query or some sort of an override, which can’t be affected by the plugin. It is very rare, but usually it is a separate query directly coded into the results page template.

Unfortunately the live results list can’t be integrated to the results page itself.

All the best,
Ernest

Thanks again for your response.

I don’t have any other search plugin installed.

I’m using a Twenty Twelve child theme, but there’s no special query coded into search.php. The default Twenty Twenty-One theme demonstrates the same issue – namely, excluded Category posts showing up in search results.

The only other thing I might add is that it’s a WP multisite installation.

Oh – then the multisite may explain it. Categories are not shared across multisite, each have different IDs, so the plugin may try to exclude something that isn’t there.

It could/should work if you configure the plugin on the exact blog you are trying to use it on, so it retains the correct category IDs on the back-end – but I can’t guarantee that either. Multisites are working a bit different, and they use different tables for posts and the metadata.

Either way, keepy the Override the default WordPress search results? ON as you test. Try to configure it on the site where you are planning to use it to see if that makes any difference.

All the best,
Ernest

Hi and thanks.

Actually it is already configured individually for each of the 3 subsites that use ASL.

As an experiment, I tried excluding a Category on another of the subsites and it worked. So it’s not a multisite incompatibility, but something specific to the one subsite.

Something which occurs to me therefore is that the pages that ASL is searching on this subsite are password protected. I have Search and return password protected posts? on, and the results show up on the Ajax search whether users are logged in subscribers or not – which is what I require. However, the clicked search page shows title links only above a membership notice (not what I require).

The Category I wish to include contains mostly protected pages. The Category pages I wish to exclude are not protected. Perhaps the problem is related to this.

OK, I just disproved that theory by switching Search and return password protected posts? off. The excluded Category still shows on the search results page. Oddly, the protected pages are still searched.

Intersting, if it worked for the other subsite, then it should work for this one too.

Just to make sure, can you try excluding a different category to test if that makes any difference? Maybe mix it up a bit and try with posts or a different post type ?