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Search Only Post Titles in WordPress

📅 Published: Nov 11, 2025 📖 Type: Post 👁️ Views: 2087
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Search Only Post Titles in WordPress
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Search Only Post Titles in WordPress Tutorial/Guide

If you want your WordPress search to check only post titles and ignore content, here's a quick method using the posts_search filter in your theme:

  1. Navigate to your theme's directory and open the functions.php file.
  2. Add the following code snippet:
function limit_search_to_post_titles($search, $wp_query) {
    if (is_search() && !is_admin()) {
        $search_terms = $wp_query->query_vars['s'];
        
        if (!empty($search_terms)) {
            global $wpdb;
            $search = $wpdb->prepare(" AND {$wpdb->posts}.post_title LIKE %s", '%' . $wpdb->esc_like($search_terms) . '%');
        }
    }
    return $search;
}
add_filter('posts_search', 'limit_search_to_post_titles', 10, 2);

That’s it! Now your search will filter by post titles only, excluding body content and pages.    

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