The only real option if you want to sort by relevance

I have been looking at various search plugins, including this one. In the end, I have decided not to use it but I still wanted to give credit where it is due. Overall, this is a great plugin and the only one I found that actually successfully tackles sorting by relevance (Better Search tries but can only search the content and title fields). I like that you can customize the relevance algorithm, though of course, that puts a burden on you to decide how to craft the most relevant results by weighting options (but sticking with the defaults will probably be fine for most). The plugin offers multiple filter hooks to customize the plugin and the site’s knowledgebase is filled with useful articles while the author seems to be very active in responding to support issues. Finally, I like that you can let the plugin create excerpts or use your own (since I had already gone to great lengths to get my excerpts the way I wanted them).

So, for anyone that cares, I chose not to use this plugin because (1) it created a rather large index (>1M rows, >500MB) and (2) I want to offer my site’s visitors with a complex advanced search form with filtering options for various taxonomies. The first issue is a result of how large my site is and Relevanssi even mentions somewhere on their site that it isn’t well suited for larger sites. Regarding the second issue, I probably could have made things work with this plugin but I had started with another that focuses on filtering and I decided to just stick with it (with lots of customization). So, really, those are personal choices not negative reflections on Relevanssi. For most folks, I think it will represent a good search option.