As experienced WordPress developers, we've helped countless sites enhance their search functionality. In this guide, we'll show you a simple, proven method to display the search query and number of results on your search page—a feature requested by one of our users. Got a topic idea? Email us!
Open your active theme's search.php file and add this code snippet just before the main loop (typically before if (have_posts())):
<?php
global $wp_query;
if ($wp_query->have_posts()) {
$search_term = get_search_query();
$result_count = $wp_query->post_count;
echo '<h2>' . esc_html($search_term) . ' search results - ' . $result_count . ' items</h2>';
}
wp_reset_query();
?>This outputs clean, user-friendly text like:
twitter search results - 15 items
For better UX, highlight search terms in results by adding this CSS to your theme's stylesheet:
.search-terms {
background-color: yellow;
color: blue;
}This tweak is one of the quickest ways to professionalize your search page. Pro tip: Pair it with result highlighting or category filters for even better WordPress search customization.
Source: Michael Martin