Hi Anne,
The search performance depends highly on your server performance. The plugin does not use any subscription based or external service to handle the actual search process, it is handled on your server.
The downside is, that each ajax request is handled by WordPress, and the response time highly depends on how well the whole WordPress core responds. Looking at the site back-end, it takes some time to load everything up, the sites needs a few seconds to start responding. The search response cannot be much faster than that.
Instant suggestions would require a dedicated 3rd party service. Some plugins do provide that for a monthly fee.
I did a few improvements, that may push the search performance further, but looking at the search performance tracker, the most recent search processes itself does not take that much time at all (0.03 s).
I did the following improvements:
– Enabled the custom ajax handler
– Enabled the index table engine on search id=4, make sure to enable that on other search bars if needed
– Changed the keyword logic to AND, it is a bit more optimal
I’m already seeing response times below 2 seconds, which is a great improvement.
What I also recommend:
– Turning off as many plugins as possible. Plugins you don’t use, should be deactivated, that may impact the site performance greatly.