There are two independent search indexes:
- Pages and Blog Posts, via main search box
- Forum, via its search box
Both are full text search indexes with one difference, the Forum cannot be searched for a hashtag while the main one can.
Types of Full-Text search
IN NATURAL LANGUAGE MODE
IN NATURAL LANGUAGE MODE is the default type of full-text search, and the keywords can be omitted. There are no special operators, and searches consist of one or more comma-separated keywords.
Searches are returned in descending order of relevance.
IN BOOLEAN MODE
Boolean search permits the use of a number of special operators:
| Operator | Description |
|---|---|
| + | The word is mandatory in all rows returned. |
| – | The word cannot appear in any row returned. |
| < | The word that follows has a lower relevance than other words, although rows containing it will still match |
| > | The word that follows has a higher relevance than other words. |
| () | Used to group words into subexpressions. |
| ~ | The word following contributes negatively to the relevance of the row (which is different to the ‘-‘ operator, which specifically excludes the word, or the ‘<‘ operator, which still causes the word to contribute positively to the relevance of the row. |
| * | The wildcard, indicating zero or more characters. It can only appear at the end of a word. |
| “ | Anything enclosed in the double quotes is taken as a whole (so you can match phrases, for example). |
Searches are not returned in order of relevance, and nor does the 50% limit apply. Stopwords and word minimum and maximum lengths still apply as usual.