Most directory owners spend their setup time on categories, listing fields, and pricing plans, then treat the search bar as something that just works out of the box. It does work out of the box. But it’s also the first real interaction most visitors have with your site, and a search experience that’s unclear or a results page that’s slow to scan is where visitors quietly leave before they ever open a listing.
Directorist puts all of this in one place: WP Admin → Directorist → Settings → Search, split into two tabs, Search form and Search results. This walks through both, what each option actually does, and why it matters for a directory business specifically, not just as a checklist.
Search form: first impressions and friction
This tab controls the search bar itself, the part of the page visitors see before they’ve done anything.
Search Bar Title and Sub-title. The title is the heading above the search bar. Out of the box it reads “Search here,” with a sub-title of “Find the best match of your interest.” Both are generic by design, meant to be replaced. Swapping the title for something specific to your directory, “Find a local business near you,” “Search available properties,” “Browse open roles,” does two things at once: it confirms to a new visitor they’re in the right place, and it starts narrowing their expectations before they’ve typed anything. Generic placeholder copy left in place reads as an unfinished site, which is a small but real trust cost.
Search Button Text. Small detail, but the label on the submit button (“Search Listing” by default) is one of the few pieces of copy every visitor reads before they commit to an action. It’s worth matching to your content, “Find a Job” on a job board reads more confidently than a generic “Search.”
Display More Filters, and the Filter Actions underneath it. This toggle controls whether a “Filters” button appears below the main search bar, expanding into a panel of additional fields. It’s on by default. The real decision here is about your directory’s size and complexity. A small directory (under roughly 50 listings) rarely benefits from an advanced filter panel, it adds a click and a decision for a result set visitors could scan directly. A larger or more varied directory benefits from it directly, since without filters, visitors are stuck scrolling through everything. Inside that expanded panel, the Reset and Apply buttons (renamable via Reset Button Text and Apply Button Text) are what let a visitor back out of a filter combination that returned nothing, worth keeping their labels obvious rather than clever.
Popular Categories. This is the block of category cards that can appear below the search bar, showing 10 categories by default. It exists for a specific kind of visitor: the one who doesn’t have a precise search term yet and would otherwise leave or type something too broad. Giving them a set of categories to click instead of a blank box to fill in reduces zero-result searches, which is one of the most common, and most avoidable, ways directories lose a first-time visitor. If your directory has more than a handful of categories, this is worth turning on; if you only have three or four categories total, it may be redundant with the search bar itself.
Search results: where searches either convert or die
This tab controls the page a visitor lands on after they search, which is arguably the more important of the two, since it’s where they decide whether to open a listing or leave.
All Listings Layout. Three choices: Left Sidebar Filter, Right Sidebar Filter, or Popup Filter. This isn’t just a visual preference, it’s a mobile-vs-desktop decision. A popup filter collapses the filter panel into a button, which tends to suit directories with heavy mobile traffic. A sidebar layout keeps filters visible at all times, which suits desktop-heavy, filter-driven browsing, like a real estate or job directory where visitors adjust criteria repeatedly.
Number of Columns and Search Results Per Page. These two settings trade off against each other. More columns and more results per page let a visitor scan more listings per screen, which feels faster, but each additional image-heavy card adds to page weight and load time. For an image-heavy directory (real estate, restaurants), it’s worth erring toward fewer results per page over a high column count that forces a slow initial load, since page speed affects both bounce rate and, indirectly, search visibility.
Hide Top Search Bar, Filters Text, and Reset text. By default the search bar stays visible at the top of the results page. Keep it there. Hiding it saves vertical space but forces a visitor who wants to adjust their search to hit the back button or start over, which is friction with no real upside for most directories.
Display Header and Display Listings Count. The header row holds the view toggle and sort dropdown; the listings count shows something like “12 Items Found.” That count matters more than it looks, it’s a quiet trust signal. A directory that visibly has volume (“1,240 Items Found”) reads as more credible and more worth exploring than one that hides the number entirely.
View Type: Grid, List, and Map. All three are available by default, and it’s worth turning off whichever doesn’t fit your content instead of leaving all three on by habit. Map view is close to essential for real estate, restaurants, or anything location-driven, visitors expect to see listings pinned relative to where they are. It’s largely irrelevant for a job board, where a list view that shows role, company, and salary at a glance is more useful than a map pin.
Sorting. This is the most overlooked lever on the page, and the one most worth reviewing directly rather than leaving on defaults. Enable Sorting Options turns the sort dropdown on (on by default), and the individual sort options, A to Z, Z to A, Latest, Oldest, Popular, Price low-to-high, Price high-to-low, Random, are all on by default, with Nearby (distance-based) off by default. Price sorting is a genuine decision-making tool on a directory where listings actually have a price field, real estate, service pricing, pricing plans. On a directory without pricing data, those same two options are just clutter in a dropdown, and worse, they suggest a feature that doesn’t actually work as expected when clicked. Turning off whichever sort options don’t apply to your content is a small change that removes a specific, avoidable point of visitor confusion.
A 10-minute setup pass, by directory type
Job board: Map view off, Price sorting off, Popular Categories set to job categories (Engineering, Sales, Design), Results layout as sidebar filter for desktop applicants filtering by role and location.
Restaurant directory: Map view on, Price Range sorting on, Popular Categories set to cuisine types, Popup filter layout if mobile traffic is high.
Real estate directory: Map view on, sidebar filter layout, Price sorting on, higher results-per-page since visitors expect to browse extensively, Nearby sort turned on if listings have location data worth sorting by distance.
Common mistakes
Leaving all eight sort options on when half don’t apply to the content type, since an irrelevant sort option is a small credibility hit each time someone clicks it and nothing visibly changes. Hiding the top search bar on the results page, which forces a full page reload just to adjust a search. Setting results-per-page too high on an image-heavy directory without checking the page speed impact. And leaving the default placeholder copy (“Search here,” “Find the best match of your interest”) in place indefinitely, since it costs nothing to replace and quietly signals an unfinished site to every new visitor.
Try it
Go to Directorist → Settings → Search, work through both tabs top to bottom, and match each setting to how your specific directory is actually used, not just what’s on by default. It takes about ten minutes and directly affects how many visitors make it from a search to an open listing. You can also check out the documentation for better idea.
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