This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Better Internal Link Search

Description

Better Internal Link Search improves the default internal link searching feature in a number of ways, making it faster and easier to find the content you want to link up.

The most basic feature limits results to posts and pages that contain your search term in the title, rather than returning every post that contains the term in the title or content field — this greatly reduces the number of results on sites with a lot of content and should improve accuracy.

Beyond that simple change are more powerful features that can be customized for your particular site, including creating shortcuts for often-used links and even searching external sites without leaving WordPress!

Features

  • Search by post or page title when adding links to the editor or adding pages to a nav menu.
  • Includes terms from any taxonomy in the search results so you can easily link to term archives.
  • Scheduled posts are included in search results.
  • Text highlighted in the editor when opening the internal link popup is searched for automatically.
  • Adds a shortcut for quickly linking to the homepage. Just type ‘home’.
  • Provides the ability to create custom shortcuts with a little code.
  • Powerful modifiers included for searching additional data sources to make linking fast and easy (Wikipedia, GitHub, iTunes, Spotify, Codex).
  • Extendable so developers can add their own sources.

Typeahead Search

Instantly see search results for pages, posts, media items or other custom post types on their Manage Posts screens. As soon as you start typing in the search field, the table instantly updates with results for whichever post type you’re viewing. Pressing enter or clicking the search button will continue to return posts using the default search algorithm (post titles and content).

Additional Resources

Screencast

Eric Amundson over at Ivy Cat recorded this great overview of the plugin’s features:

Screenshots

  • Standard search results. The "Contact Us" page is nowhere in sight and in fact, is about the 95th page in this particular list.
  • Results with Better Internal Link Search activated. The text selected in the editor was automatically searched and matches are based on title only.
  • Shortcuts demonstration.
  • Search modifiers help list.
  • A search modifier in action.

Installation

Installing Better Internal Link Search is just like installing most other plugins. Check out the codex if you have any questions.

FAQ-e

Installation Instructions

Installing Better Internal Link Search is just like installing most other plugins. Check out the codex if you have any questions.

How do I know which shortcuts are available?

Type shortcuts in the search field and all of your registered shortcuts will be listed. Additional shortcuts can be added with a little bit of code in your functions.php, so if you find yourself linking to a particular URL over and over again, add a shortcut and save yourself some time!

How do I know which modifiers are available?

Type - or -help in the search field and the search modifiers will be listed with their syntax and a brief description about what they do.

Although they can be a bit more complex to use, they have the potential to save a lot of time when repeatedly linking to external websites. For example, searching for the term ‘interrobang’ on Wikipedia would look like this:

-wikipedia interrobang

A few simple modifiers have been included by default and should serve as examples for developers that want to create their own or change the syntax. Basic support is built in for Wikipedia, iTunes, Spotify, the WordPress plugin directory, the Codex, GitHub repositories, listing a user’s GitHub Gists, and linking to author archive URLs.

There is a slight delay when opening the internal link popup. Help?

If your site has a lot of content, the automatic search feature may cause it to lag as search results are retrieved. You can disable this feature by unchecking the “Automatic Search” field on the Writing settings screen in your dashboard (go to Settings → Writing).

Reviews

06 April 2018
Does exactly what it says. Just install it and you can start adding links to custom taxonomies (my particular need) in the WYSIWYG right away. Thanks to the developer for this! And yes, it should be in the core.
27 March 2018
As someone already said this should be in the core, does the job very well!
27 February 2018
This plugin is essential. In fact, it's vital for websites with many posts that need to insert multiple internal links, not only to pages or posts, but also to categories, tags, menus, etc. It adds excellent features to the internal links finder, which aren't normally included in WP code (and they should be). I currently use version 4.9.4 of WordPress, and until now this plugin works perfectly. Thank you very much
08 November 2017 1 reply
Did not work for Spotify but all other queries? Yes! I agree with many others; this should be in the core. This makes it so easy to search for PDF's which is my primary usage. Downside? There is no "hover" support. That is all I'm missing. If I could see a preview of the content of the link when hovering it, that would to me, complete this plugin and it would get 5 stars.
05 October 2017
This plugin provides a basic function that frankly should be baked right into WP. Can't live without this.
Read all 25 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Better Internal Link Search” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Better Internal Link Search” has been translated into 3 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Better Internal Link Search” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.3.0 – December 1, 2016

  • Fixed the functionality that limited search results to items with the search term in their title after a change in core disabled this feature.
  • Fixed the spinners on screens with post list tables.
  • Fixed the Spotify search modifier.
  • Updated URLs to https where possible.
  • Transferred to Cedaro.

1.2.12

  • Prevent errors with other plugins using AJAX when internal-link-manager.js is enqueued.
  • Removed German translation files in favor of WordPress.org language packs.

1.2.11

  • Loaded scripts and styles anywhere the editor is loaded to make the improved internal searching available. Props joostdevalk.
  • Updated German translation. Props wpdocde.
  • Fixed a typo in the help text. Props christophherr.

1.2.10

  • Fixed a bug when using with Advanced Custom Fields. Props lmartins and coreyw.

1.2.9

  • Updated the search field to selector to account for an id change in WordPress 4.2.
  • Used isset to check for a property an variable to prevent notices when it’s not an object.

1.2.8

1.2.7

  • Added a setting to disable inclusion of term archives in default search results.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the ‘pre_better_internal_link_search_results’ filter to have no effect on results.

1.2.6

  • Fixed the automatic searching feature that quit working in WordPress 3.9. Works in 4.0+.
  • Internationalized additional strings.
  • Minor code clean-up.

1.2.5

  • Cleared floats for descriptions in results to prevent overlap.
  • Quit suppressing filters for instant search so other plugins can filter the query.
  • Initialized the instant search query using wp_edit_posts_query() instead of WP_Query().
  • Fixed strict PHP notices.

1.2.4

  • Fixed a syntax error when calling array_merge().

1.2.3

  • Added a check to prevent errors with plugins that don’t use the WordPress AJAX API.
  • Updated JavaScript to pass JSHint tests.
  • Updated text domain and improved loading of language files.

1.2.2

  • Changed keypress event for typeahead search results to work in Chrome.
  • Added an action to the typeahead AJAX callback so custom P2P columns display.
  • Added support for WordPress SEO custom columns.

1.2.1

  • Fixed a bug with instant search in WordPress 3.5.
  • Better compatibility with plugins that create custom columns, specifically Codepress Admin Columns.
  • Cleaned up code formatting and whitespace.

1.2

  • Added instant search on Manage Posts/Media screens.
  • Reorganized the plugin structure.
  • Fixed a bug with paging for local search modifiers.
  • Added “-media” search modifier by Erik Larsson (Twitter: @e_larsson).

1.1.2

  • Fixed a bug that didn’t allow builtin search modifiers to be disabled.
  • Added an option on the Writing Settings screen to disable the automatic searching of text selected in the editor when the Internal Linking popup is activated, so that it doesn’t cause a delay on sites with a lot of content.
  • Added an upgrade routine to setup default settings and store the current version number for future upgrades.
  • Added uninstall.php to remove options if the plugin is uninstalled.

1.1.1

  • Fixed bug preventing link popup from opening in HTML mode.

1.1

  • Include term archives in results.
  • Include scheduled posts in results.
  • Debounced the search field.
  • Added multiple hooks for modifying results.
  • Added shortcuts feature.
  • Added search modifiers.

1.0

  • Initial release.