Most Recent Changes

Ajax Search Pro changes and updates

4.29.1 - 2026-06-16

This release builds on the 4.29.0 foundations. It overhauls Index Table exclusions, adds built-in numeric indexing and manually addable custom-field keys, makes the Priority Groups condition system far more flexible, and ships a batch of admin-panel and block-editor fixes — including Gutenberg block support for the WordPress 6.9 iframe editor.

New Features

• Index Table — Exclusions overhaul (#343):

  • All exclusion rules are now consolidated into a single Exclusions panel.

  • New date-based exclusions — skip content older than a given date, applied globally or separately per post type (e.g. don't index very old posts).

  • New author exclusions and manual post-ID exclusions (pick specific posts to leave out).

  • These join the existing taxonomy-term and custom-field exclusion rules.

• Index Table — numeric data extraction (#44) — a new option (on by default) that extracts numbers embedded in your content as separate searchable tokens, so a search for 1234 can match an indexed SKU1234. This is a built-in replacement for the previous asp_indexing_keywords filter snippet.

• Index Table — manually addable custom-field keys (#164) — the "Custom fields to index" selector is now a creatable select: type any meta key and choose Add "key", even for keys that aren't yet present in postmeta. This covers ACF / Meta Box / Pods fields not yet saved on any post, and externally stored fields (e.g. Jet Engine custom meta storage) that never appear in postmeta.

• Priorities — more flexible condition system (#340):

  • A new "+ Add condition" gate lets a priority group target multiple search instances and multiple phrases (with matching logic), and gate the group on taxonomy or custom-field filter values taken from the live search query.

  • New per-boost priorities and an Ordered Posts boost for arranging promoted posts in an explicit order.

Fixes & Changes

• Gutenberg blocks — WordPress 6.9 iframe editor: both ASP blocks now register with block API version 3, clearing the "API version 1 is deprecated" notice and rendering correctly inside the iframe editor; the search preview also stays full-width in the editor (#342).

• Index Table post-type selector now lists custom post types registered with show_in_rest => false, which were previously missing from the selector and could never be added to the index from the UI (#345).

• Priority Groups follow-up — correctness and polish fixes surfaced by the redesigned conditions and boosts (#344):

  • Accurate migration of pre-4.29 priorities — including multisite networks — into groups with a single Ordered Posts boost.

  • Full custom-field operator support in both conditions and boosts: LIKE, NOT LIKE, =, ≠, numeric comparisons, BETWEEN, and multi-value IN / NOT IN via a tags input.

  • Stable, fixed-width group editor modal and consistent dropdown styling.

• The Index Overview history chart now appears immediately instead of only after the first refresh.

• Refreshed the WordPress admin menu icon (a crisp vector magnifier) and moved the Ajax Search Pro menu to a tidier position in the admin sidebar.

4.29.0 - 2026-06-03

This is a major release. It introduces the new Search AI — a suite of AI-powered tools that help you configure, diagnose and improve your search instances — and ships ground-up rebuilds of the Index Table, Analytics, and Priorities systems, a reworked Synonyms engine, several new suggestion sources, and a wide range of admin-panel, performance and stability improvements.

New Features

• AI Assistant — a new, license-gated suite of AI-powered tools available from a dedicated admin menu, with its own usage-tracking tab and interaction log:

  • Configuration Wizard — guides you through setting up a search instance and applies a recommended configuration for you.

  • Search Quality Report — analyses a search instance and reports issues and actionable recommendations.

  • Priorities Advisor — reviews your priority rules and flags problems such as orphaned terms/posts, empty rules, misconfigured phrase logic and nameless groups.

  • Synonym Discovery — suggests synonyms based on your content to improve recall.

  • Stopword Conflict Detector — detects stopwords that conflict with your indexed content.

  • Diagnostic Chat — ask questions about your search setup and get guided answers.

  • AI Keyword Suggestions — an AI-powered autocomplete and keyword-suggestion source; AI-sourced phrases are flagged in the frontend with a sparkle badge.

• Index Table — rebuilt with a new management interface and engine:

  • New Overview panel with live indexing stats, a Stop button and restart support.

  • Index-size history chart with daily snapshots (recorded via REST, WP-CLI and WP-Cron) and a keyword-count series.

  • Cursor-based re-indexing for reliable processing of large sites.

  • New taxonomy-term exclusion rules and custom-field exclusion rules with AND/OR logic.

  • Re-index notification banner after settings that affect the index are saved.

  • In-panel WP-CLI tips; the "Post Types & Taxonomies" panel is now "Post Types & Filters".

• Analytics — rebuilt fully:

  • Configure multiple Google Analytics 4 events with a flexible items[] format and 8 event triggers (including "try this").

  • New {search_id} and {search_name} template variables for event values.

  • Legacy Google Analytics 3 (window.ga) support has been removed.

• Priorities — overhauled:

  • Individual Priorities have been merged into Priority Groups via a new post rule type.

  • Per-group enable/disable toggle with panel descriptions.

  • Multisite per-blog targeting for priority groups.

• Index table keyword suggestions — a new autocomplete and keyword-suggestion source backed by the search index. It surfaces the words closest to what the visitor typed, with typo and transposition correction, ranked by popularity (#337)

• User Searches block — a new Gutenberg block displaying Popular or Latest visitor searches, replacing the removed Top/Last search widgets (#318)

• Synonyms — reworked: expansion is now always bidirectional (the "synonyms as keywords" option has been removed), synonyms are expanded at query-time for taxonomy term searches, and the panel shows a stale-index warning after changes so you know when a re-index is needed (#335)

• Admin pages modernized: the Compatibility (now absorbing the former Performance page), Maintenance, and Help & Updates pages were refactored to a React/REST architecture, with a "Reset to defaults" option on Compatibility. The legacy Export/Import submenu has been removed.

• All Searches: media panel reordering and bulk-delete support.

• License activation gate: admin pages now prompt for activation when the license is inactive, with clearer activation and validation error messages.

Fixes & Changes

• Optimized taxonomy filtering in search queries by replacing nested IN/NOT IN sub-queries with EXISTS/NOT EXISTS, preventing oversized queries that were being killed on some managed hosts (#287)

• Fixed statistics-based keyword suggestions querying a dead legacy table; they now read from the active statistics table (#326)

• Removed a dead code that made unneccessary db writes for legacy script data (#339)

• Fixed possible fatal errors during plugin updates caused by a stale autoloader held in PHP memory (#336)

• Fixed the Inter font not loading and the admin body font being incorrectly overridden (#334)

• Upgraded the back-end color picker (spectrum) from v1.1.1 to v2.0.10, fixing a Safari white-swatch bug and transparent gradient handling.

• Prevented theme-bundled jscolor scripts from hijacking the admin color pickers and resetting values after save.

• Fixed a dbDelta error on activation by dropping stale duplicate synonym indexes.

• The indexing UI now stays alive across admin menu switches, and stops & refreshes correctly when settings are saved.

• Removed the performance-tracking feature; improved decoding of legacy encoded values during compatibility and post-type migrations.

• Statistics panel improvements: switched charts to an area-chart style and fixed checkbox contrast and sizing in light and dark modes.

• Admin UI polish: semantic button variants, refreshed stat-card tiles, and removal of unintended coloured accents.