The 3 Search Modes in Init Live Search: Choosing the Right One for Your Site’s Scale

Level 1: WordPress Native Search (default WP_Query)

This is the simplest mode — it bypasses all of Init Live Search’s custom logic entirely and hands the query straight to WordPress’s built-in WP_Query, exactly as if no search plugin were installed at all.

This mode makes sense in two situations: your site is small enough that the smarter fallback layers aren’t needed, or you’re running another search plugin (like SearchWP or ElasticPress) that hooks directly into WP_Query — in that case, you want Init Live Search to act purely as the modal interface, while the other plugin handles the actual search logic.

How to enable it: go to Settings → Init Live Search → General, find “Use WordPress Native Search?”, and check “Bypass all custom search logic and use WordPress built-in WP_Query search instead.” When enabled, other advanced options like Search Mode, search operators, and ACF fields get locked since they no longer apply.

Level 2: Init Live Search’s Advanced Logic (default)

This is the default mode whenever Level 1 is off — and it’s the plugin’s core strength, running entirely on the database with no extra infrastructure required. It includes:

• +/- operators: +wordpress forces a term to appear, -plugin excludes it from results, and multiple operators can be combined in one query.
• Synonym dictionaries: expand search terms based on context (built-in dictionaries for ecommerce, technology, business, and health, plus the ability to define your own synonyms via JSON).
• Smart fallback: automatically trims keywords or tries bigram matching when the initial query doesn’t return enough results.
• Weighted merging: when searching across multiple sources (title, excerpt, SEO metadata, ACF fields), results are re-ranked using a weighted merge algorithm that favors matches in higher-priority fields.
• SEO metadata and ACF field search: supports Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, TSF, and SEOPress, plus any ACF fields you declare.

For most sites — even ones with several thousand posts — this level often delivers a more relevant search experience than Meilisearch, because it understands your site’s specific vocabulary (through custom synonym dictionaries) rather than relying purely on generic typo-tolerance algorithms.

How to enable it: nothing to do — it’s the default. Just make sure “Use WordPress Native Search?” from Level 1 is unchecked.

Level 3: Meilisearch (optional, for large-scale sites)

Meilisearch is a purpose-built, self-hosted search engine offering near-instant response times and algorithmic typo tolerance (no predefined dictionary required, unlike Level 2’s synonym system). It’s the right choice once your dataset is large enough that database queries start to slow down — typically tens of thousands of posts or more.

How to enable it: you’ll need your own Meilisearch server (self-hosted or Meilisearch Cloud). Then go to Settings → Init Live Search → Meilisearch, enter the Host URL, Index Name, and Search API Key, check Enable Meilisearch, and run wp init-live-search meili-reindex to push your existing content into the index. See the dedicated Meilisearch setup guide for the full step-by-step walkthrough.

How they actually interact: not “pick one of three”

Here’s the part that matters most: these three levels aren’t independent switches you choose between. The actual processing order for every search request is:

1. If Meilisearch is enabled and reachable, the plugin answers with Meilisearch — Levels 1 and 2 aren’t invoked at all in this case.
2. If Meilisearch is disabled, unconfigured, or hits an error/timeout, the plugin falls back to the database — and only at this point does it check whether “Use WordPress Native Search?” is on:
   • Enabled → uses Level 1 (plain WP_Query)
   • Disabled (default) → uses Level 2 (Init Live Search’s advanced logic)

In other words, Meilisearch sits as the highest-priority layer, while the choice between Level 1 and Level 2 only determines what happens when Meilisearch isn’t in use — whether that’s because you haven’t configured it, or because it’s temporarily having issues. This is also why enabling Meilisearch never means losing Level 2’s capabilities — they simply sit unused while Meilisearch is healthy and answering requests.

Which level should you use?

• Very small sites, or sites already running another search plugin: enable Level 1.
• Most sites — from personal blogs to sites with several thousand posts: keep the default, Level 2.
• Large-scale sites (tens of thousands of posts or more) that need speed and general-purpose typo tolerance: set up Meilisearch for Level 3, while Level 2 remains ready as a safe fallback at all times.