Features

Search

Make it easier for readers to search for content on your site.

The GOV.UK Eleventy Plugin makes it easy to add search to your website.

It works by creating a search index each time you build your site. This JSON file contains the title, description and URL of every page, plus a list of words that appear on that page.

View an example search index (JSON, opens in a tab)

This search index provides suggestions when users type in the search box in your site’s header or service navigation.

Configure the search index

To enable search indexing, set templates.searchIndex to true in your plugin options.

Or, you can customise the search index by using these options:

Name	Type	Description
permalink	string	Sets the file name and location (default is /search-index.json). Set to false to disable writing this file to the output folder.

Add a search bar to your site’s header or service navigation

Add the permalink value to the corresponding plugin options for header.search or serviceNavigation.search. For example:

import { govukEleventyPlugin } from '@x-govuk/govuk-eleventy-plugin'

export default function(eleventyConfig) {
  eleventyConfig.addPlugin(govukEleventyPlugin, {
    header: {
      search: {
        indexPath: '/search-index.json',
        sitemapPath: '/sitemap'
      }
    }
  })
}