Advanced Woo Search vs Category Wise Search
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| Feature | Advanced Woo Search v3.73 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.8/5 Visit Details | Category Wise Search v1.3 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.8/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 70,000+ | 400+ |
| Last updated | October 20, 2026 | March 26, 2019 |
| Editions | Advanced Woo Search · Advanced Woo Search PRO ($) | Category Wise Search Widget |
| Pros | Live AJAX search across product fields with a dedicated index table; Gutenberg blocks, a widget and an Elementor widget for placing the form; Did-you-mean suggestions and search terms display | Category dropdown in a search widget; Default category and excluded categories per widget |
| Cons | The readme lists several search sources and layouts as PRO-only; Index rebuilds run as background jobs, which need cron to run on time | Uses create_function, removed in PHP 8, so it fails on current PHP; Last tested with WordPress 5.1.1; not maintained |
| Mentioned in our posts | 1 | 1 |
| More features | ||
| Other features | AJAX live search results, Background search index table kept in sync with products, Search results page replacement, Did-you-mean and similar-term suggestions, Gutenberg search blocks, Elementor search widget, WP-CLI command to rebuild the index | Category dropdown in the search form, Default category selection from the query string, Exclude categories and their children |
| Integrations | ||
| E-commerce | WooCommerce | — |
| Plugins | Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, WPML | — |
| Requires WordPress | 4.0 | 2.9 |
| Requires PHP | 7.0 | — |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 5.1.1 |
| Phones home | No | No |
| Blocks | 3 | — |
| Shortcodes | 6 | — |