3  Search page

The search page will list the results of a search submitted from its search field.

There is a Search link at the end of the top navigation bar of every public page that replaces that page with this page, leaving the focus at the Text field. The results of any search will open this page with the results, or the external search provider's results page if the site owner has specified one.

Requiring at least one character, a search does a case-independent search of all articles to find which contain all the words in the search. Avoid using common words like to or and which would skew results away from the words actually wanted. Alternatively, click the Exact checkbox to search only for the exact phrase. Here, words like to or and must be included if in the wanted phrase. The Exact checkbox is not available if the site uses an external search provider, in which case any exact phrases required will typically need to use double quotes (") around them.

The target page will replace the search page, so seeing other results target pages requires clicking the browser's back button to click on their link. This process is to minimise the number of open pages.

The internal search is not fuzzy, in that only the exact words are searched for. If more than one subsite, the article's owning subsite's name will precede the count. If the site uses multiple locales, the locale for the text containing the words will precede the count, and may result in an entry for each locale for an article in which all of the words were found in the texts of multiple locales. Some articles, like procedures and tests, may have hidden text when first displayed, such as notes for procedures, or comments on results for tests, and so will need some interaction to expose them.

The internal search recognises any word breaks in the search term, regardless of language, so pictogram characters are treated as one word each, unless Exact is checked. If there are more than four articles listed, a navigation bar is displayed, with links to every fifth article.

External search providers have their own methods of parsing the search words, determining which results to show, and how they are displayed, though they usually allow user customisation of them. If a site is for a domain that also has subdomains, the returned results will likely include pages from them as well.