Derek Herman has released a WordPress Plugin titled Relevant Search that improves on the default WordPress search functionality, which has a notorious reputation for being less than stellar.

Herman explains the basic workings of the Plugin:

The basic idea behind this plugin was to add a FULLTEXT index to the post_title & post_content and run a bit of REGEX on the search terms using that index. Then once daily the plugin will update the index with wp_schedule_event() to keep the search results from become corrupted or invalid.

The Plugin is available on CodeCanyon, one of the Envato Marketplaces. Herman is the front-end developer for Envato’s Plus line of sites, and developed the Plugin primarily to improve search across their network of websites.

You can follow Derek Herman on Twitter at @valendesigns.