Description

Browsers can learn how to search a website if the site tells them. This plugin adds that information to your WordPress site, in the form of an OpenSearch description document.

Once activated, visitors can add your site as a search engine in their browser, or the browser picks it up on its own. Typing a keyword and a search term into the address bar then searches your site instead of the web.

There is nothing to configure. Install it, activate it, done.

What visitors get

Chrome and Edge: your site shows up under “Site search” in the browser settings. After activating it there, visitors type your domain, hit Tab and search your site. Chrome calls this “Tab to Search”.
Firefox: the address bar offers to add your site as a search engine. Visitors can also right click the address bar and pick “Add” (OpenSearch in Firefox).
Safari: with “Quick Website Search” enabled, Safari remembers your site after the first search and offers it in the address bar.
Search suggestions: while typing, the browser can show suggestions. The plugin uses your tags for that.
Your site icon is used as the icon of the search engine, if you have one set under Appearance > Customize > Site Identity.

What the plugin adds

The OpenSearch description document at /wp-json/opensearch/1.1/document
A suggestions endpoint at /wp-json/opensearch/1.1/suggestions?s=…
Autodiscovery links in the HTML head and in the Atom and RSS feeds
A search provider entry in the web app manifest, for the “search_provider” WebExtension setting
Links in host-meta and WebFinger, if those plugins are installed
Search URLs for the Atom and RSS search responses and the OpenSearch Suggestions extension

Screenshots

Safari Quick Website Search — Firefox OpenSearch plugins

Installation

Install the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory, or upload the open-search-document folder to /wp-content/plugins/
Activate it through the Plugins menu
That’s it, there are no settings

FAQ

How do I check that it works?

Open https://yoursite.com/wp-json/opensearch/1.1/document in your browser. You should see a short XML file with the name of your site and the search URLs.

Does it change the search on my site?

No. The plugin only describes the search you already have. The browser sends visitors to your normal search results page.

Chrome does not offer my site for “Tab to Search”

Chrome no longer adds sites on its own. Go to chrome://settings/searchEngines, look for your site under “Inactive shortcuts” and activate it. Edge works the same way under edge://settings/searchEngines.

Where do the suggestions come from?

From your tags. Other plugins can change that with the open_search_document_suggestions filter.

Can I add query params to the search URLs?

Yes, with the osd_search_url_template filter. The second argument tells you which search URL is filtered: html, atom or rss2.

function custom_osd_extend( $url, $type ) {
    return add_query_arg( 'mtm_campaign', 'opensearch', $url );
}
add_filter( 'osd_search_url_template', 'custom_osd_extend', 10, 2 );

What are the tags in the document?

The Tags element lists the ten most used tags of your site, as keywords for the search engine. Sites without tags get WordPress blog. The osd_tags filter lets you change the list.

Can I add more elements to the document?

Yes. The osd_xml action runs inside the document, right before the closing tag. The osd_ns action lets you add namespaces to the root element.

Reviews

Marc Bernard ഏപ്രിൽ 10, 2020

Thanks for this nifty plugin! Perfect! You might want to add some documentation since it's very hidden how it works. 1) After activating the plugin, a <link rel="search"> tag is added to the header of your webpages. 2) This link points to https://domain.com/wp-json/opensearch/1.1/document and produces an XML document. 3) This document.osdx contains the OpenSearch specification for your website. 4) An additional use case, is downloading this file to your Windows machine. Then you can double-click it to install a search connector to Windows. This lets you search your own website directly from your Windows and Explorer search bars. Just type the first letters of your website name to get it going! Best, Marc

Saleswonder Team: Tobias ജനുവരി 23, 2018

Maybe an gif animation for the visitors which is linked to a desccription howto use would be nice. i would like to translate to german.

ok2vvv ജനുവരി 17, 2018

Plugin works exactly as it should. I was looking for a plugin that activates on the web in google chrome search using the TAB key. Thanks a lot.

rinma ഏപ്രിൽ 20, 2017

This plugin is easy to use. Install it and it works 🙂

Read all 4 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Open Search Document” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

“Open Search Document” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Open Search Document” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

4.2.0

The REST controller extends the WordPress WP_REST_Controller class
Search suggestions keep spaces and upper case letters in the query
The document no longer has a stray null at the end
Site name, description and URLs are escaped for XML
The suggestions URL has rel="suggestions" and the document links to itself with rel="self"
Site icons carry their MIME type
The Tags element lists the most used tags of the site, filterable with osd_tags
Removed the Contact element, the spec expects an email address there
Removed the Developer element
Removed the XRDS-Simple integration, the plugin is closed on WordPress.org
url_template() and feed_url_template() are deprecated, use get_url_template()
Requires WordPress 6.4 and PHP 7.4
Added tests and a new readme

4.1.3

update plugin structure

4.1.1

fix PHP deprecated: strstr(): Passing null to parameter

4.1.0

added “search_provider” WebExtension support

4.0.1

fix broken XML output

4.0.0

modernize code
added filters for the search URLs in the OSD document

3.0.3

fix missing permission callback

3.0.2

update requirements

3.0.1

added screenshots
code improvements

3.0.0

moved to WordPress API

2.1.2

fixed site icon implementation

2.1.1

fixed site icon implementation

2.1.0

fixed XML output
encapsulated XML data

2.0.0

complete refactoring
WordPress coding style
Site icon support

1.3.1

Some smaller fixes

1.3

fixed host-meta link
added webfinger support

1.2.2

Added function to flush rewrite_rules

1.2.1

Autodiscovery for host-meta

1.2

OpenSearch Suggestions extension

1.1

WordPress 2.8.x compatibility
Autodiscovery for RSS/Atom and XRDS
Profile-Services

1.0

Initial release

Works perfectly well (and completely hidden as expected)

thanks for the update, why not used on more webpages?

Perfect

Do what it should

Description

What visitors get

What the plugin adds

Screenshots

Installation

FAQ

How do I check that it works?

Does it change the search on my site?

Chrome does not offer my site for “Tab to Search”

Where do the suggestions come from?

Can I add query params to the search URLs?

What are the tags in the document?

Can I add more elements to the document?