WebEquipe PDF Search

WebEquipe PDF Search indexes your PDF files and makes their text fully searchable. When visitors search your site, they see instant results from both your posts/pages and the content hidden inside your PDFs. Search returns one clean result per PDF with a smart excerpt from the best-matching page.

The plugin interface is available in English, French, German, Dutch, and Swedish, loading automatically to match your WordPress language.

Looking for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for scanned documents? While the free version indexes standard text-based PDFs, WebEquipe PDF Search Pro brings advanced Cloud OCR capabilities directly to WordPress, allowing you to index and search scanned image PDFs, historical archives, and photo-only documents seamlessly.

Video

Watch our feature overview to see standard indexing and Pro Cloud OCR capabilities in action:

Supported PDFs & OCR Compatibility

• Standard Text PDFs: Works flawlessly out of the box with digital PDFs exported from Word, Google Docs, InDesign, etc. File size default 50MB, configurable up to 500MB in PDF Search → Settings.
• Mixed Layout PDFs: If some pages contain extractable text and others are image-only, indexing succeeds with an admin warning; core search covers the native text pages.
• Scanned or Image PDFs: Image-only or scanned PDFs with no embedded text are marked Error in the free version. To make these searchable, WebEquipe PDF Search Pro uses automated OCR to extract and index the text for you.
• Protected Files: Password-protected PDFs cannot be indexed.

Keep Private PDFs Out of Search

Need to hide or protect certain PDFs? The free version lets you use Exclude so a PDF is never indexed and never appears in search—even when you run "Re-index All PDFs" or bulk index. Excluded PDFs stay in your Media Library; they just won't be searchable. Use Include later to allow indexing again. You can exclude or include PDFs from the Media Library or from PDF Search → Manage PDFs.

Looking for Restricted or Member-Only Search? (Pro Feature) If you want to keep documents indexed but restrict who can see them, WebEquipe PDF Search Pro includes a Private PDF Search feature. This allows you to index files and mark them as Private so that only logged-in users can find them in search results. Logged-out or public visitors will never see them, making it perfect for member directories, internal company handbooks, and premium resources.

How to Use

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Open PDF Search in the WordPress admin sidebar (Dashboard is the home screen).
3. Click Re-index All PDFs on the Dashboard or PDF Search → Index Activity to index existing PDFs (new uploads are indexed automatically when Enable PDF Indexing is on).
4. Use your site's search or add the shortcode [webequipe_pdf_search_form] on a page—PDFs will appear in results when Enable Search Integration is enabled.

Use PDF Search → Manage PDFs to scan the library, filter by status, and run bulk actions. Use PDF Search → Index Activity to review indexing runs, export a CSV log, or start another full re-index.

Settings at a Glance

All options are under PDF Search → Settings:

• General – Enable PDF indexing on upload, include PDFs in WordPress search, maximum file size (50MB default), search result excerpt length.
• Indexing options – Batch size (PDFs per re-index step), pages per batch (background page steps), page index threshold (when large PDFs switch to page-by-page indexing), max page content length (0 = unlimited; re-index after changing).
• Search display options – Show or hide PDF icon, file size, page count, last updated date, author, thumbnail preview, and summary/snippet text in search results.
• Advanced – Debug logging, memory limit, processing timeout, background processing, delete data on uninstall.

Full details and shortcode options: PDF Search → Help.

What You Can Do

• Dashboard – Indexed PDF count, pages indexed, coverage, search health, recent activity, quick links, and Re-index All PDFs (status banner uses live index data).
• Manage PDFs – Scan the library, filter by status (including Processing / Scheduled), cancel in-flight jobs, bulk actions, and accurate Re-index All progress with a do-not-refresh notice.
• Full-text search – Search inside PDF content by page; one result per PDF with the best-matching excerpt.
• Control each PDF – Index, unindex, exclude, or retry from the Media Library, Manage PDFs, or the attachment screen.
• Bulk actions – Index, unindex, include, or exclude multiple PDFs at once (Media Library or Manage PDFs).
• Index Activity – Filterable log of every indexing run, stats, and CSV export.
• Search display – Configure icons, meta, previews, and excerpts in settings.
• Shortcode – Add a PDF-only search form with [webequipe_pdf_search_form] (see PDF Search → Help).
• Background processing – Large PDFs above the page threshold are indexed page-by-page in the background to avoid timeouts.
• Multilingual interface – Admin and front-end text is translated into French, German, Dutch, and Swedish, loaded automatically based on your WordPress language setting.

Pro Version — OCR, Private Search & Analytics

The free plugin indexes standard text-based PDFs. WebEquipe PDF Search Pro is optional (sold separately) and extends the free plugin with three features document-heavy sites often need:

OCR for Scanned PDFs (Starter, Pro & Agency) Scanned PDFs, archived documents, and image-based files are invisible to the free plugin. Pro uses Google Vision OCR to read and index them automatically on upload—no pre-processing, no extra tools. Government records, old meeting minutes, scanned handbooks: all searchable.

Private PDF Search (Pro & Agency) Mark any PDF as Private. It remains fully indexed but disappears from search results for logged-out visitors. Perfect for member-only handbooks, restricted resources, and confidential documents—without removing them from your Media Library.

Analytics Dashboard (Pro & Agency) See exactly what visitors search for and—more importantly—what they search for and don't find. Zero-result queries are your content gap list. Top queries, most-clicked PDFs, and click-through rates, all in one admin screen.

Plans & Feature Comparison

Choose the tier that fits your workflow. Every premium plan includes automatic background indexing, priority updates, and expert support:

• Free Plan: Full-text search for standard PDFs, auto-indexing, and shortcode integration. (Forever Free)
• Starter Plan: Adds Cloud OCR (up to 1,000 pages/month) and advanced search filtering.
• Pro Plan: Adds Private PDF Search, the full Search Analytics Dashboard, and higher OCR limits (3,000 pages/month).
• Agency Plan: Includes everything, White-Label mode, volume OCR processing (10,000 pages/month), and unlimited site licenses.

View current pricing tiers and upgrade to Pro now ->

Troubleshooting

PDFs not appearing in search

Ensure PDFs are indexed (Media Library → "Search Indexed" column), Enable Search Integration is on, and the PDF is not excluded. Check PDF Search → Manage PDFs for Error status and use Index Activity to see why a run failed.

Indexing fails or times out

In PDF Search → Settings: enable Background Processing, review Pages Per Batch and Page Index Threshold for large files, and lower Batch Size if Re-index All PDFs stops early. Under Advanced, adjust Processing Timeout and ensure PHP memory_limit and max_execution_time are sufficient (see Help). Very large PDFs are processed in multiple page batches automatically when over the threshold.

Scanned PDFs marked as Error

The free plugin cannot extract text from image-based or scanned PDFs natively—this is normal behavior. To automatically index scanned layout files, upgrade to WebEquipe PDF Search Pro (Starter plan and above) to utilize cloud-based Optical Character Recognition (OCR). See Pro plans →

Legacy index after upgrade

If you see a notice about migrating to per-page indexing, run Re-index All PDFs from the Dashboard or Index Activity page.

Other issues

See the FAQ above and PDF Search → Help for full documentation.

Privacy

The plugin stores extracted PDF text and metadata in custom database tables (webequipe_pdf_search_files, webequipe_pdf_search_pages, and webequipe_pdf_search_activity, with a legacy webequipe_pdf_search_index table until you re-index). A compressed backup may also be stored in WordPress post meta for PDF attachments. If debug logging is enabled, recent log entries are stored in a WordPress option (not written directly to disk). The plugin does not collect or send visitor search data to external services. If your PDFs contain personal or sensitive information, that content is in the index—mention this in your privacy policy if required.

Third-Party Libraries

• smalot/pdfparser (LGPL-3.0) – PDF text extraction
• symfony/polyfill-mbstring (MIT) – multibyte string support

Credits

Developed by WebEquipe. Uses smalot/pdfparser for PDF text extraction.

Support

• Support: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/webequipe-pdf-search
• Pro plans and pricing: https://webequipe.com/pdf-search/