Tweaking Ajax Search Pro for significant speed increase

[wildguitars06]

Hi Ernest,

I hope you’re doing well, my friend! We are continuing to enjoy your wonderful plugin and fantastic support.

Our website continues to suffer from a very slow search engine – we have over 3,000 products and several tags per product. Sometimes it takes over 20 seconds from the moment you hit “Enter” until the search results page loads.

We discuss this briefly almost a year ago in the following thread: Link

You checked out our website and I tried to make some tweaks but the results were unsatisfactory.

Nobody knows your plugin better than you. I was hoping to receive a thorough support session with you, via Zoom/AnyDesk any other program of your choice. Although I happily pay the support every time I receive a payment request to renew it, I am happy to pay extra to have this issue sorted for good.

Please let me know if you are able to lend me some of your time. The search engine is currently our website’s Achilles heel and we’ve been receiving complaints from our customers that I’d like to resolve.

Thanks!
Tom

[Ernest Marcinko]

Hi Tom,

I hope you are fine too! Thanks again for the details.

I’m afraid this issue is completely unrelated to our plugin unfortunately. To simply test this, I deactivated the plugin programmatically (don’t worry nobody saw it), and did a search query without the plugin. The response time was exactly the same: https://i.imgur.com/gHOJU1M.png
As you can see there is almost a 30 second delay when loading up that page. I choose a random query, so there are no results to display, so the built in search finishes quickly.

These types of issues are very hard to get by. It can be a background process somewhere, which hangs up the server for too long. The search process should not take this long, even with the built in search, it is not possible.

The best possible course of action to find the culprit is:
– If you have any custom codes (custom php snippets on the server side), disable them one-by-one to see if that changes anything
– Same with the plugins, disable them one by one to see if the speed increases at any given point.
– If still nothing, switch the theme temporarily to see if that fixes the problem
If you can’t do these on the live site, set up a staging site somewhere and copy everything exactly, and test there instead.

I suspect, that somewhere along the way you will find the cause. It is usually a plugin (like almost every time), but definitely check any custom codes you have implemented. It can be anything minor, literally just a single line of code, that is why it’s very very hard to find the exact point.

If none of these helps, then looking at the server might be a good idea too. I don’t think that is the problem, but if disabling everything does not help at all, then it is very likely something wrong on the server side. The database can be full, the memory can run out etc..

Unfortunately I am not available for custom sessions, this is all I can give you about tweaking the issue.

[wildguitars06]

Hi Ernest, thanks as always for your very prompt and very insightful reply – you really are the best.

Please download the following video that I have recorded for you, demonstrating the search time on the live website using the default search (https://www.wildguitars.co.il/?s= ) vs. the Ajax Search Pro bar. This is with all plugins on and everything running normal.

https://we.tl/t-PMpxHT8FYr

Looking forward to your additional thoughts.

Best regards,
Tom

[Ernest Marcinko]

Hi Tom,

You are checking the wrong page in the video. That is the default results page, while the plugin is directed to the WooCommerce results page. If you try: https://www.wildguitars.co.il/?s=&post_type=product
..then the response time is going to be over 20 seconds – even if the plugin is disabled. The problem seems to be with the WooCommerce results page.

If you change the search to redirect to the default results page, the response time will be fine.

[wildguitars06]

Hi Ernest,

Thank you for this important clarification. Indeed the URL you provided results in an extremely long search time. The odd thing is, that on our staging website the results are much faster – only a few seconds.

Comparison:
https://www.wildguitars.co.il/?s=metal&post_type=product
https://dev2.wildguitars.co.il/?s=metal&post_type=product

We are trying to figure out what is causing the difference.

Best regards,
Tom

[Ernest Marcinko]

You are welcome. Yeah, there is a huge difference there, it is very much noticable.

It looks like as if the server is waiting for something, and then continues execution. Definitely check WooCommerce related plugins, as it only happens in the woocommerce results page.

[wildguitars06]

Hi Ernest, when you say WooCommerce related plugins, do you mean plugins that were developed by WooCommerce?

[Ernest Marcinko]

I mean anything related to WooCoomerce, but this is just a tip to start off somewhere. I suspect the issue is related to something, that is related to WooCommerce, but I am just guessing. Doing the things step-by-step as I suggested earlier may reveal the issue.

[wildguitars06]

Thanks, Ernest! I hope to resolve this issue soon.

Best regards,
Tom

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