← Business Search Manager

Business Search Manager Documentation

BSM Business Search Manager provides a configurable search platform for WordPress. It gives site administrators control over what content is searchable, how results are ranked, how search intent is interpreted, and how results are presented to visitors.

This guide covers initial setup, indexing, ranking, search intent, result display, analytics, and ongoing maintenance.

Getting Started

1. Install and Activate

Install BSM Business Search Manager through the WordPress Plugins screen and activate the plugin.

After activation, open BSM Search in the WordPress administration menu.

2. Configure Indexed Content

Open the Indexed Content settings to determine which WordPress content types participate in search.

For each supported public post type, you can configure:

  • Index — Include or exclude the content type from BSM search.
  • Admin Weight — Increase or decrease the ranking priority of that content type. Higher values provide stronger priority.
  • Scheduled Policy — Choose whether content is refreshed when it changes or refreshed during every scheduled indexing cycle.
  • Force Refresh — Immediately rebuild the indexed content for a specific post type.

Pages can also be configured using inclusion or exclusion rules when only specific Pages should participate in search.

3. Build the Search Index

After configuring indexed content, perform a Full Rebuild to create the initial BSM search index.

A rebuild is also recommended after making substantial changes to indexed content or ranking configuration.

Normal WordPress content changes are indexed automatically. Scheduled refreshes provide an additional mechanism for content that may be updated by imports, integrations, or other processes.

Adding Search to Your Site

Search Form

Use the following shortcode to place a BSM search form:

Search Results

Use the following shortcode to control the exact location of search results:

When BSM detects explicitly placed search components, those placements take precedence over automatic Search page rendering.

This allows the Search page to be designed using the normal WordPress editor, theme, template system, or compatible page-building tools without BSM unnecessarily duplicating search components.

Search URLs

BSM uses the site's Search page as the destination for searches. The standard query format is:

/search/?q=search-term

Friendly search URLs can also be accepted and redirected to the canonical search URL.

When WordPress search integration is enabled, standard WordPress searches using ?s= are redirected into the BSM search experience.

Ranking

BSM ranking can combine textual relevance, administrator-defined content priorities, curated results, and behavioral signals.

Admin Weight

Each indexed content type can be assigned an Admin Weight. Higher values give that content type greater ranking priority.

The Admin Priority Multiplier controls the overall influence of administrator weighting on organic search results.

Result Ranking Mode

BSM provides two result-ranking modes:

  • Standard Ranking — The default BSM ranking algorithm. Results are ordered according to normal relevance, administrator priorities, and available behavioral signals.
  • Diversity of Results — Uses the normal BSM ranking algorithm while helping prevent highly similar organic results from appearing consecutively.

Diversity of Results does not remove matching content. All qualifying results remain available; BSM only adjusts their relative placement where appropriate.

Explicitly curated results and Pins remain authoritative.

Rules

Rules provide direct administrative control over specific searches.

Pins

A Pin promotes selected WordPress content for a matching search.

Rules can use matching behavior such as:

  • Exact match
  • Starts with
  • Contains

Pins take priority over normal organic ranking.

Redirects

A Redirect sends a matching search directly to a configured destination instead of displaying a normal results page.

Redirects are useful for searches where there is one clear authoritative destination.

Search Intent Buckets

Search Intent Buckets allow multiple related search terms to be treated as belonging to the same search intent.

For example, abbreviations, alternate terminology, common variations, and related phrases can be grouped so users can find the appropriate content regardless of which supported term they enter.

Intent Modes

  • Expand — Expands the search using terms associated with the intent.
  • Canonical — Uses the canonical term configured for the intent.
  • Both — Uses the canonical term together with the expanded intent terms.

Intent Override Results

An Intent Bucket can define up to 10 ordered override results.

These results are selected from WordPress content and appear in the administrator-defined order before normal organic results.

Intent overrides are useful when an organization knows which pages or resources should be considered authoritative for a particular search intent.

Autocomplete

BSM can provide autocomplete suggestions while visitors enter a search.

Autocomplete settings include:

  • Enable or disable autocomplete.
  • Minimum number of characters before suggestions appear.
  • Maximum number of suggestions.
  • Content-based title suggestions.
  • Successful popular-search suggestions when sufficient search activity exists.

Content suggestions remain the primary autocomplete source. Search activity can supplement those suggestions rather than replacing them.

Behavioral Relevance

BSM can use anonymous search-result interaction data as a secondary ranking signal.

When enabled, BSM can consider which results visitors select for particular searches. Minimum activity thresholds help prevent isolated clicks from disproportionately affecting ranking.

Behavioral relevance supplements the primary search algorithm. Administrator Pins, Intent overrides, and other explicit curation remain authoritative.

Results Display

The Results Display settings control how BSM search results appear on the public site.

Available controls include:

  • Show or hide thumbnails.
  • Show or hide excerpts.
  • Show or hide destination URLs.
  • Show or hide the result count.
  • Configure result content order.
  • Open results in the same window or a new tab/window.
  • Configure excerpt length.
  • Choose manual or generated excerpt behavior.
  • Configure results per page.
  • Enable pagination.
  • Enable matching-term highlighting.
  • Configure thumbnail aspect ratio.
  • Configure thumbnail fallback behavior.
  • Configure display order for individual content types.

Result cards can be configured so the entire card acts as a clickable destination while retaining a standard semantic title link.

Styling

BSM includes default public styling designed to provide a usable search interface without requiring custom development.

Administrators and developers can customize the appearance using BSM's semantic CSS classes and CSS custom properties.

Custom CSS can be entered through BSM settings so customizations remain separate from plugin files and are preserved during plugin updates.

Advanced implementations can disable BSM's default public stylesheet and provide their own complete presentation layer.

Common CSS Classes

.bsm-search
.bsm-search__form
.bsm-search__input-wrap
.bsm-search__input
.bsm-search__submit
.bsm-search__autocomplete
.bsm-search__summary
.bsm-search__results
.bsm-search-result
.bsm-search-result__media
.bsm-search-result__image
.bsm-search-result__content
.bsm-search-result__featured
.bsm-search-result__title
.bsm-search-result__title-link
.bsm-search-result__excerpt
.bsm-search-result__url
.bsm-search__empty

CSS Custom Properties

--bsm-title-size
--bsm-title-weight
--bsm-excerpt-size
--bsm-url-size
--bsm-card-gap
--bsm-card-radius
--bsm-image-width

Analytics

BSM Search Analytics helps administrators understand how visitors use site search.

Available reporting includes:

  • Total searches.
  • Zero-result searches.
  • Search-result clicks.
  • Average number of results.
  • Top searches.
  • Top zero-result terms.
  • Most-clicked results.
  • Average clicked position.

Zero-result reporting is particularly useful for identifying missing content, terminology differences, potential synonyms, and opportunities for new Intent Buckets or Redirects.

Search Attribution

BSM provides an optional public attribution setting:

Show "Search powered by BSM Strategy"

Disable this option if public search attribution is not desired.

Configuration Import and Export

BSM configuration profiles can be exported and imported for migration, backup, testing, and deployment across WordPress environments.

Supported configuration formats include JSON and XML.

After importing settings that affect indexed content or ranking, perform a Full Rebuild so the search index reflects the imported configuration.

Index Maintenance

BSM provides several mechanisms for maintaining the search index:

  • Automatic indexing when normal WordPress content changes.
  • Scheduled refreshes at configurable intervals.
  • Force Refresh for an individual content type.
  • Full Rebuild for rebuilding the complete configured index.
  • WP-CLI support for administrative and automated workflows.
  • REST-based refresh for authorized external processes.

External Refresh Security

External refresh requests require the configured BSM refresh key.

The preferred authentication method is the HTTP header:

X-BSM-Refresh-Key: YOUR-REFRESH-KEY

Keep refresh credentials private and restrict access to trusted systems.

Troubleshooting

New or Updated Content Does Not Appear

Confirm that the content is published, its post type is enabled under Indexed Content, and it is not excluded by Page or hidden-content rules.

Use Force Refresh for the affected content type or perform a Full Rebuild if the index configuration has recently changed.

Search Ranking Changed After Configuration

Changes to content weights, ranking configuration, or indexed content can require a Full Rebuild before all search results reflect the new configuration.

Search Returns Too Many Similar Results Together

Change Result Ranking Mode from Standard Ranking to Diversity of Results. BSM will spread highly similar organic results where appropriate without removing them from the result set.

A Search Should Always Show a Particular Result First

Create a Pin for the search or create an Intent Bucket with ordered override results when multiple related search terms should share the same curated destinations.

A Search Should Go Directly to a Page

Create a Redirect rule for that search.

Search Form Appears More Than Once

Use the BSM search shortcode where you want the form to appear. BSM detects explicitly rendered search forms and avoids adding a second automatic form to the Search page.

Updates

BSM Business Search Manager integrates with the BSM Strategy update service and supports standard WordPress plugin update notifications and installation.

Available updates appear through the normal WordPress Plugins and Updates interfaces.

Recommended Setup Workflow

  1. Install and activate BSM Business Search Manager.
  2. Select the content types that should be searchable.
  3. Configure Admin Weights and scheduled refresh policies.
  4. Configure the Search page and place BSM shortcodes where desired.
  5. Configure ranking and autocomplete.
  6. Configure the public results display.
  7. Perform a Full Rebuild.
  8. Test representative searches.
  9. Add Pins, Redirects, synonyms, and Intent Buckets where appropriate.
  10. Review Analytics regularly for zero-result searches and opportunities to improve search relevance.

Support

For product information, documentation, updates, and support, visit BSM Strategy.

Need help? Visit Support & FAQ