Help talk:Searching/Archive 6

Spaces
I think I'd better say clearly that recent changes I made actually change what users are recommended to do. The document essentially said "spaces are optional in most cases, but in a few instances must not be present" (e.g., in, Insource:). I think that is confusing. There is no reason to type spaces if they're not needed, so I've changed this to say essentially "don't use spaces if they're not needed, but they're usually (not always) ignored if you do". Full details were, and are continued to be, supplied; it's just the recommended use that's changed. I've also removed some unnecessary spaces from examples. I've already done this, and nobody seems to be objecting, but I thought I'd better point it out. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 19:00, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Edit Request

 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. - Mlpearc  ( open channel ) 05:12, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Exclude all subpages from search
Is it possible to exclude all subpages from a Wikipedia search? Help:Searching gives only a way to restrict your search to subpages. I want to search the WP namespace without sifting through a thousand results for WP:Articles for deletion/Foo and the like. Is this possible? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:42, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Searching for *two* quoted strings in quotes?
If what I search for in the search box is that works fine as does But if I search for The first hits are for things like the article on quotation marks. This occurs regardless of the contents of the strings inside the quotation marks. Ideas?Naraht (talk) 16:06, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * "Alpha Beta" Gamma
 * Alpha "Gamma Delta"
 * "Alpha Beta" "Gamma Delta"

WP:Request a query
Pursuant to the discussion at WP:VPT, I suggested and followed up on the creation of a page to WP:Request a query based on the success of the similarly named page at Wikidata. Just wanted to let the kinds of persons who follow the page here know about it, in case someone comes along and find their search insufficient. --Izno (talk) 17:38, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Considering adding the following at the end of section 'From any web page'
In you use the Chrome browser with Windows then you can add a setting to the browser's context menu that enables you to use google to make a restricted search of wikipedia from any webpage for words that you highlight in the page.

Now, whenever you want to search for a word or series of words in any page from within Chrome simply highlight the search item, right-click on it, select 'Context Menu Search' and select 'en.wikipedia'.
 * From any page, highlight a word (using either mouse or keyboard gestures).
 * Now, either right-click or Shift+F10.
 * Select menu item 'Context Menu Search' with either mouse-click or arrow keys then Enter.
 * Select menu item 'Options', at the bottom.
 * See a form entitled 'Add more Search Engines manually'
 * In the 'Display name' field enter en.wikipedia (or a name for this item of your choice).
 * In the 'Link' field entered exactly https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F+%s
 * Now click on 'Add new option'
 * See a form entitled 'Manage Context Menu Items'
 * Click on 'Save new config'
 * Close the tab (Mouse gesture or Ctrl-F4).

My questions


 * Any objections?
 * A better place for the inclusion of this, assuming it's unavailable elsewhere? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SewerCat (talk • contribs)
 * Help:Searching might say some external search engines like Google can search the English Wikipedia by placing  in the search box. I think Chrome instructions for a shortcut to this is too detailed. https://www.google.ca is Google Canada. Please use https://www.google.com if you make instructions anywhere. Help:Searching from a web browser seems better suited for browser details. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:49, 13 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your thoughts! I was aware of the fact that Google can be an option in the search box but I find this much easier to use and I thought that others might too. Missed the Google Canada entirely. Can you given me some general rule for reducing the level of detail. I agree about where this should go. SewerCat (talk) 14:25, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

New search results feature
In the ongoing effort to improve the discoverability of all the world's knowledge, the Discovery team is proposing an enhancement to the search results page on Wikipedia (Special:Search). The goal of this feature is to display related content for each individual search result returned from query, so that even when the search result itself isn't maybe entirely useful, perhaps its related content would be. We would like your early feedback on this new feature—more information can be found on MediaWiki about the explore similar functionality and testing can be done in your own browser, using step by step self-guided testing instructions. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 21:00, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Improving the search
When searching for "Robert Phillip Hanssen" (double L), the page Robert Hanssen (full name:Robert Philip Hanssen - single L) does not even appear in the list of results. When searching on Google, the first result is Robert Hanssen. Maybe searches like this can be improved. —  Ark25  (talk) 16:35, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If you click on Robert Phillip Hanssen in the search result box it will offer you Robert Philip Hanssen as a pop up, which will redirect you to Robert Hanssen. For those not aware of that, I have created a redirect from Robert Phillip Hanssen to Robert Hanssen. On the whole, though, I agree that a search for Robert Phillip Hanssen should be offering up Robert Hanssen much more readily.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  22:14, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Can someone write my Biography or Can I myself ?
I want Wikipedia to know about me and create a page about myself. Yatin Mehndiratta (talk) 08:43, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Yatin Mehndiratta, no. That is what personal websites, personal blogs, and social media are for. Softlavender (talk) 11:17, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Problems with search on English Wiktionary
See. Basically, if a page has a multi-word title, and you search for an exact one of the words in that title, you'd expect to find that page in the search results, but it is rarely even on the first results page. Instead you get lots of irrelevant stuff that isn't spelled the same way. Is this a bug? What can we do? Equinox ◑ 21:23, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Per Help:Searching, search  in quotation marks to only get exact matches. Per Help:Searching, search   to only get results from titles. They can be combined with  . PrimeHunter (talk) 00:12, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Recent
Hi, Sorry for sounding stupid but how does one search for the most recent results ?, -recent and prefer-recent doesn't work for me? (IE when I search ""London" -recent" or ""London" prefer-recent" I still get jumbled results), Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 21:28, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
 * See mw:Help:CirrusSearch. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:36, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
 * thanks so much!, – Davey 2010 Talk 01:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Question about incategory (or category related) search
This is after I asked this question and got an answer here. However I either didn't ask the question correctly, or I simply haven't been able to use the answer to get to where I need. I want to search for all articles (not categories) that have been assigned: 1. any category whose title includes the term "Scorsese", boolean-AND 2. any category whose title includes the term "comedy". I tried advanced search by checking only the box for Category but this is for category results, and there is no single category that includes both these terms. I checked also the Article box, but I got many unwanted results. Then I tried various combinations with filters and boolean operators but I can't seem to get what I need. Any further clues? Thank you. Hoverfish Talk 22:36, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * You could do this with a regex  search in the article namespace. --Izno (talk) 01:56, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * You might also try WP:Petscan or WP:RAQ. --Izno (talk) 12:17, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much Izno. I also use PetScan and I see what you mean with insource + regex, I hadn't thought about it but I will try it next. My main concern however is not so much for editors tasks but for a way to make such searches more approachable to the layman. I will check RAQ and see if I can find some way to encapsulate such querries. For WP Films it's only a certain number of main-film-genre-terms that have been diffused in too many subcategories to be usefull in searches. Thanks again for the tips. Hoverfish Talk 14:00, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 September 2017
Hitech waterproofing (talk) 09:40, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.  Flow 234 (Nina)   talk  10:50, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

"Sister projects" should be changed to "similar projects"
...or something that is likewise non-genderized. This turns up to the right on the search page where the suggestions are offered. It sounds off and awkward and inappropriate. Like something from the ministry of feminist information, like some kind of female only endeavour. Please stop this double standard. If you have to say "humanity" or "humankind" instead of "man" or "men" then it's only fair to stop this "sister" nonsense too. Gender bias free language should apply all around. Thanks. Alialiac (talk) 17:32, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Searching within (or exclusively without) reference contents...
Is there any way to limit a search to specifically text within a pair or specifically to everything that isn't inside them? I know regex, and I'm sure that a sufficiently complicated insource regex could do it, but I'd rather not, if there was any other way.Naraht (talk) 15:49, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Insource is the only way besides resorting to a database scan... which would probably also require regex. --Izno (talk) 17:15, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
 * That said, if you know the text internal to the reference, you can also search for that instead. (Unless you're looking for template parameters or something?) --Izno (talk) 17:16, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 January 2018
Remove the dash from the last list item of. None of the other entries begin with a dash. 67.14.236.50 (talk) 08:00, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done DRAGON BOOSTER   ★  09:27, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

searchToken
In case anyone has been wondering about the  at the end of the URL for a search result, I asked about it at mw:Help talk:CirrusSearch, and the summary is:

--Pipetricker (talk) 15:23, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Add link for search on Wikidata
RFC here, please join -> MediaWiki_talk:Wdsearch.js. -- Superchilum (talk to me!) 10:51, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Explain links
Page should have a section on how to make links. -Inowen (talk) 22:36, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The page has three links to search link. It's just a template at the English Wikipedia and not a part of the search feature. I don't think Help:Searching should explain how the template works. It's documented on the template page. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:48, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Confusion
I am confused by this edit. No, WP does not require Javascript. However, the placement of the emdashes indicates that you believe the "default" is Vector without Javascript. This is not the case for the majority of people. --Izno (talk) 13:35, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * You're right. The mdash phrase was a compact way of referring to multiple kinds of defaults: default behavior (when JavaScript is off) and default skin (Vector).  I will improve it. &mdash;  Cp i r al &sect; Cpiral  17:58, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Should Qwika be removed?
As I look at the Qwika search page, it is showing "Updated Crime Data!" with a date of "Thu 31 Mar 11", which I take to mean that their crime data information was last updated 7.5 years ago. If the rest of the search engine is that old, perhaps the Qwika section should be removed from the Help:Searching page. Eddie Blick (talk) 01:05, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes,, it doesn't look updated. I didn't see a link on Help:Searching. Did you see the reference on External search engines? I have removed it there. --Izno (talk) 01:35, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, . Yes, it was the External search engines page. I had both pages open and typed the wrong title in my comment. Thanks for catching my error. Eddie Blick (talk) 01:54, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 December 2018
Change the title of to Prefixed hyphen character for exclusion or similar for consistency with preceding subheadings. 96.8.24.95 (talk) 04:42, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅, thank you. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:28, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

To do list
Main revamp is complete. I'll be back to work on this page some more. Though feel free to jump in and improve the page. The more the merrier. Below is a task list of work needed on the page. Feel free to add to it. &mdash; The Transhumanist     08:16, 16 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Place content from overview section ✅
 * Identify the search engine ✅ covered in the section "Under the hood"
 * Integrate merge section under search box ✅
 * Integrate merge section under search results page ✅
 * The section Help:Searching needs a heavy editing. ✅
 * Integrate the list items under Search string syntax ✅
 * Check Allpages for subpages of Help:Searching ✅ see below
 * Gather missing information, from: ✅
 * Help:Advanced search ✅ (merged - it was a content fork)
 * Help:Searching/Draft ✅ (merged - most of it was transcluded, the rest was a content fork)
 * Gather links about searching for the see also section ✅
 * More redirect support ✅
 * Section redirect support. ✅
 * Redirect maintenance ✅
 * Check all redirects leading to the page, and correct if needed ✅
 * Shortcut support for sections ✅
 * List the shortcuts in shortcuts directory ✅
 * Integrate boolean list item into section prose ✅
 * The section Help:Searching needs a heavy editing.
 * The lead needs refining, and section linkification.
 * Namespace and sister project prefixes should be covered, or at least a link to the help pages should be provided.
 * A full proofread is needed.
 * Check these facts (include them if they verify as accurate)
 * Each parameter has search indexing and page ranking prerequisites
 * A regular expression search is not an indexed search, and so in order to pre-establish its reasonable search domain, a regular expression search requires an accompanying search term that is an indexed-search filter
 * Every search box and search link and inputbox has the same search engine and same search results page, Special:Search.
 * It also offers one-button modification of the search domain, and through user preferences, the Wikipedia Search results page can run the search on other search engines, and go to their search results page.
 * When presenting results, the internal search understands and will link to relevant sections of a page
 * The ordering of the list of search results is determined by the page ranking software, but you can make adjustments to it. [How?]
 * For articles, a message box may show up beside a listing, indicating that it has a sister page on another project, such as a Wiktionary entry that defines the title of a Wikipedia article.
 * Track down the bug in regular search box pertaining to subpageof: parameter
 * Gather missing information, from:
 * , such as from:
 * mw:Help:CirrusSearch
 * around WP, such as from:
 * Help:Searching from a web browser
 * Help:Searching/Features
 * Help:Searching/feedback
 * Help:Searching/Regex
 * Help:Searching/Regex/Sandboxing

Search without folding
How do I search for article titles containing the word "Strasse"? I tried intitle:Strasse and intitle:"Strasse" and intitle:/Strasse/; they all returned titles with "Straße". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:24, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think our search function can do it for titles. It can do exact match searches and other regex searches with  but not   (requested in T156474). You can use https://tools.wmflabs.org/grep/ for that. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:11, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Michael, this has now been fixed, so  supports regular expressions, so   won't find "Straße" anymore. (But neither Help:Searching#intitle: nor mw:Help:CirrusSearch has yet been updated to document it.) --Pipetricker (talk 09:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It is now documented. --Pipetricker (talk) 17 February 2019
 * You can use  to only find whole words. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:56, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Good point. And it also limits the expensive regex search. --Pipetricker (talk) 12:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Getting to advanced search faster
Has anyone already done a JS script that adds some way to get directly to Advanced Search without first having to do a search? I almost never use the search box to just search for something, unless I"m in "reader mode" and am not working as an editor. My usual routine is to enter something like asdfjasodfijasdofj in the search box and search on it, then get into advanced mode, then pick my namespaces, then replace the search string with what I'm actually looking for. Rather inefficient. Hoping there's a "widget" of some kind that puts advance search as a clickable icon or something next to the default search box, in the site-wide top menu.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:48, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Your method can start with an empty search. You can place the below in to get a [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?profile=advanced Search] link to the left of "Log out". PrimeHunter (talk) 23:14, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

How to ask "is infobox parameter coordinates" controlled by wikidata values?
I asked this question (more or less) over at the WP:Helpdesk, where is has been greeted with '???!?!?' so far. It is an unusual search request!

Tsing Yi North Bridge used to show geophysical coordinates displayed twice. For reference, Tsing Yi South Bridge still does. The coordinates were coming from both an embedded

and from Wikidata.

So the question is: how could I search for articles where the °N, °W template is used and where now Wikidata is enabled for the articles and has coordinates values? I can't see the ability to ask questions about Wikidata and a particular article.

I'd really hate to check every page that uses the °N, °W template, cuz I think it said 1.1 million? Shenme (talk) 03:00, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

How do I "ask" for an article to be created?
"The page "" does not exist. You can ask for it to be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered."

I clicked the "ask for it to be created" and it just sends me to "Articles for creation" I don't see an "ask" function there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.206.181.191 (talk) 06:35, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Neither do I. I think Requested articles, which has the heading "How to request an article", would be a more suitable link in that message. --Pipetricker (talk) 11:22, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Articles for creation says: "If you have an idea for the title of an article, but no content for the article itself, please make a request at Requested articles". But it's not prominent, and there is no apparent reason to read the section if you don't want to create a draft. MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new-nocreate added the link in 2011 when Articles for creation linked Requested articles in the opening paragraph.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation&oldid=424347945] Requested articles does seem like a more logical target for MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new-nocreate. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:36, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:RESULTS listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect RESULTS. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:06, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:LOPS listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect LOPS. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:13, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WILDCARDS listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect WILDCARDS. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:22, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Regex listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Regex. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:23, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

H:S listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect H:S. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:46, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

regex look behind /look ahead example?
I want to find all instances of "Phi Alpha" on Wikipedia that are not part of "Alpha Phi Alpha" or "Phi Alpha Theta". But I can't get the look ahead or look behind syntax to work. Does Cirrus Search do look ahead/look behind examples? I know to pair whatever I can do in insource with simply searching for "Phi Alpha" in order to have it finish at all.Naraht (talk) 19:32, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The built-in search supports only a limited subset of the regular expression syntax. H:INSOURCE links to mw:Help:CirrusSearch, which tries to explain what is supported, and that links to a formal definition of the supported syntax. There's nothing about look aheads/look behinds. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:52, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank You.Naraht (talk) 08:38, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Please review proposed updates to boolean/logical operator documentation
As discussed in more detail in Phabricator ticket T228925, it turns out that parentheses and the boolean operators  and   do not actually work as advertised in the documentation. The short term plan is to update the documentation to reflect current reality, and the long term plan is to fix reality to reflect the currently aspirational documentation. Here's the first draft of the update to go in the Help:Searching Logical operators section:
 * The search engine supports limited boolean logic in searches. Logical  (negation) can be indicated by a " " (minus sign) or a " " (exclamation point) character prefixed to a search term, or by the   keyword.
 * Parentheses  are ignored by the search engine and have no effect.
 * The operators  and   are used by the search engine, but do not have the expected boolean logical meaning and should be used with great care. See the additional documentation for an in-depth explanation.

I've also written a draft of the longer explanation (~1200 words) of the use of Logical operators in on-wiki search. Feedback is much appreciated! I still need to review the rest of the Help:Searching page and mw:Help:CirrusSearch page to see if any other changes are needed there. TJones (WMF) (talk) 15:29, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

^ and $ in intitle regular expressions
I would expect  to show pages with titles starting with "Europe", but instead there are no results. Is the lack of support for  and   in regular expressions a known limitation? Is there a workaround? falsifian (talk) 17:50, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I would recommend instead using . I don't know if this is a deliberate limitation, but that method is supported. --Izno (talk) 17:41, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I don't see support for suffixes ( seems to just search for "suffix") or for regular expressions in a prefix ( returns no results), so I am still interested in a general answer. I might file a bug on Phabricator. For some context: a friend and I are planning to build a tool to support move request discussions (especially ones invoking WP:CONSISTENCY) by showing what kinds of title are in common use, or to find more titles for a multi-rm. For example,  vs.   would have been relevant to this discussion. falsifian (talk) 18:10, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think the answer regarding suffixes (and I'd guess prefixes) is phab:T90090, though I think that comment was made before regex was implemented for title searching. There may also be some related chatter in phab:T12808. --Izno (talk) 18:20, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Category intersection example has no results
The second example given in section incategory: has no results, probably because all of the relevant articles are in subcategories of Category:Suspension bridges in the United States. Replacing the first incategory: with deepcat: appears to give the desired result. Should this be replaced with another example? (cathartid - talk) 01:33, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Deepcat
The deepcat example seems to be off. For some reason, if the category's first letter is not capitalized, the search doesn't seem to search in the subcategories. First see Category:Musicals and then compare these searches: vs. . The latter search also gives the following warning: "A warning has occurred while searching: Deep category query returned too many categories". Maybe we should change the example search and category to a smaller category with correct capitalization, for example to ? 85.76.139.129 (talk) 19:58, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Reported as T228633 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:09, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * looks like this capitalisation issue will be fixed after next week. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:04, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes Cya37 (talk) 18:43, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

questions
It says above, that this is not the place to ask questions. Where is it, then, that we ask questions about how "search" works, or more specifically, how it doesn't work? I have some queries that are not getting the desired and expected results. Thanks. Gah4 (talk) 02:35, 17 October 2019 (UTC)


 * OK, I figured out the answer without so much help from this page. I am searching for something with a # in it. It seems that I need insource:/.../ to get a regular expression, and \# inside the regular expression to match the #. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gah4 (talk • contribs) 02:42, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yup. You should prefer to search for some other text though as well, since regex insource searches are expensive. --Izno (talk) 04:18, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It seems that it wouldn't match the # without it. And I didn't do it so many times. If it should match the #, then maybe it needs fixing. Gah4 (talk) 08:28, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It's common for search features to ignore punctuation characters, also in quoted strings. Google does this. Izno meant a double search like at mw:Help:CirrusSearch where another part of the search reduces the number of possible pages so the regex part only has to be applied to those pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:40, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It is common, but the documentation says that inside quotes that they should match. The actual search is:  insource:/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation\#/ so no metacharacters, and I believe fast enough. The similar search with double quotes instead of / doesn't work. Thanks. Gah4 (talk) 19:41, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * ignores punctuation so it also finds pages with spaces instead of underscores, and it finds pages with or without the punctuation character '#'. I don't know the implementation of regex searches without metacharacters but I think you should do the double search . The '#' is ignored in the first part and may be omitted there.  makes exact character matches so you only find cases with underscores. If you also want spaces then you can for example do . This gives 14 results instead of 1. It's optional to use spaces or underscores in the first part. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:44, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * After I did the above search, I did the same with blanks instead of underscores. I hope there aren't ones with mixed blanks and underscores. With quotes instead of /, it ignores both # and \#. I haven't tried any double search like you show. Tradition of GNU grep is to do a Boyer-Moore search on the longest fixed string before doing the regexp match. I suspect others now do that, too. Is there a place, other than here, where we should ask these questions? And thanks for answering them here. Gah4 (talk) 01:36, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Answering here is fine, though you could also ask at WP:Help desk or WP:VPT.
 * So, since you still don't seem sure of yourself: The # (like most punctuation) is not matched inside quotation marks because it is considered grayspace (at mw:Help:CirrusSearch: Spacing between words, phrases, parameters, and input to parameters, can include generous instances of whitespace and greyspace characters. "Greyspace characters" are all the non-alphanumeric characters ~!@#$%^&_+-={}). See also Help:Searching.
 * For caps insensitivity in a regex, you can do /i e.g.  as the slow route and   where desired for the faster route. You can't get the same for spaces versus underscores unfortunately, so you should use a group   or search on another term of interest such as , above. --Izno (talk) 03:17, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 January 2020
Menenaviation (talk) 11:25, 4 January 2020 (UTC) i want a editing account to publish my articles which will perform well in your website please help me to get the editing account. thank you.
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.. For information about user access levels, see User access levels. Majavah (t/c) 13:16, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Feature request: Provide a list with the resulting articles
I am searching for the articles that contain the string "Vales" in the title - intitle:/Vales/. The search tool finds 76 items.

My request is to provide a list with the titles of the articles found, like this: ..
 * Vanessa Williams (redirect from Valessa Williams)
 * Middle-earth (redirect from Vales of Anduin)
 * List of minor planet discoverers (redirect from Jan Vales)
 * Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska
 * Vale tudo (redirect from Vales Tudo)
 * Valescourt
 * Saint-Raphaël, Var (redirect from Valescure)
 * Fronteira dos Vales
 * Valestan

I think it would be really useful for the users. It can help them in many ways. For example to introduce the list in a text file and to further refine the search, using a text editor, or for using a robot for changing text in the respective articles (for example there are 237 articles containing the string "Neamţ County" and a robot should change the text into "Neamț County" - from T-cedilla to T-comma). Thank you. —  Ark25  (talk) 21:44, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I would also like this. AutoWikiBrowser has the feature and can also make lists in many other ways: AutoWikiBrowser/User manual. I have a crude version by placing this in Special:MyPage/monobook.css:


 * It hides the other lines on search results pages. If you use Vector normally then you can change a search page to display in MonoBook by adding  to the url. If you have MonoBook then place it in Special:MyPage/vector.css and add   to the url. You can also manually apply the above css to a viewed browser window with a feature in most browsers. You can also add this to :


 * On search pages it makes a "MonoBook" link under "Tools" to repeat the search in MonoBook. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:34, 29 March 2020 (UTC)


 * These scripts are really great! I forgot to mention that I am not using AutoWikiBrowser; many of the users who would benefit from this feature won't have the time and patience to use AWB.
 * Do you have any link to some documentation that explains how to manually apply the above css to a viewed browser window ? I'm just curious.
 * Thank you! —  Ark25  (talk) 00:32, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It depends on the browser. In Firefox I right-click somewhere on the page, click Inspect Element, click Edit CSS, and copy the css code to the top. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:42, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Escape characters
Is it possible to escape certain characters in the searchbox? I would like to search for intite:/, Ohio/ but it will ignore the comma character so is it possible to escape this character? Like writing "\," instead of ",". Thank you. —  Ark25  (talk) 21:05, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * You are missing "l" in intitle so it makes a normal content search and not a regex title search. The correct does not ignore the comma. Backslash "\" is the escape character in regex searches but it's not needed for a comma. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:18, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

articletopic
The central help page now has a section about the  search keyword which has been added a few weeks ago. Maybe worth adding here as well. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Let's Eliminate or Document Limitations re. aliases and Pseudo-namespaces / pseudoaliases.
Search, and this page, are a nightmare when it comes to pseudo-namespaces. Let's Eliminate or Document Limitations re. aliases and Pseudo-namespaces / pseudoaliases!

In the H:PARAM Parameters section, it's written under

namespace name:

...Namespace aliases, like "WP" for "Wikipedia", are accepted.

However, a search for  or   fails.

Help:Searching is similarly unhelpful.

doesn't appear even once on this entire help page!

Solution options
Didn't the WMF fund the current search system? Perhaps adding support for Pseudo-namespaces (Shortcut, WP:PNS, WP:Namespace sometimes called simply -and erroneously- namespaces!) would be easier than documenting all the shortcomings. Certainly seems feasible for a quick hack to make https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=T%3Adubious and the like much better.--50.201.195.170 (talk) 23:33, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Not using pseudo-namespaces is actually preferred. :) --Izno (talk) 23:35, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I claim most users would prefer if a search for T:dubious or H:PARAM didn't fail / did bring up template:dubious and H:PARAM. You would prefer otherwise?  Why?  Why would anyone prefer they not work as suggested.  And who else do you claim to speak for?--50.201.195.170 (talk) 19:10, 6 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Search knows nothing about the idea of pseudo-namespaces, and I assume that also applies to most readers. Help:Searching is mostly for readers while pseudo-namespaces are mostly for editors. Mentioning pseudo-namespaces in Help:Searching might cause more confusion than it solves. Namespace says: "Pseudo-namespaces are not in any way recognised by the wiki software; they are purely a community custom. Titles in pseudo-namespaces actually belong technically in the main (article) namespace and are treated as such by the software: they are case-sensitive and appear in search results restricted to the main namespace." Pseudo-namespaces are merely a custom to make a limited number of mainspace redirects to other namespaces on names starting with certain strings like CAT:, H:, MOS:, P:, T:. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:16, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, we don't want to confuse readers... and H:Searching, which readers certainly do use, is itself in a pseudo-namespace. (Do recognize it is mostly for them.)  You're quoting from a page I linked to.  Aware of all that.  So, what's your suggested solution?  You are posting in the "Solution options" section...
 * I claim most editors would prefer if a search for T:dubious or H:PARAM didn't fail / did bring up template:dubious and Help:PARAM, and most readers won't do such searches. Agree?
 * Or maybe X/Y problem: How does one get to, say, the template dubious fastest?--50.201.195.170 (talk) 19:10, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Creating a "Solution options" subsection from the start was odd, especially without signing the main section. I'm not going to create a "Comments" subsection to address your posts (and I clicked edit at the main heading). H:SEARCHING got 10 page views in 2020 and Help:Searching got 240,568.|H:SEARCHING Help is a real namespace. I'm not sure what you want by "adding support for Pseudo-namespaces" if isn't to actually make them namespace aliases like WP. That could be done with mw:Manual:$wgNamespaceAliases but it would require developer support. T: for Template would make things a little easier for me but I can live with typing a few more characters. Most people would probably prefer T for Talk if it was a real alias. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:05, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Most people would probably prefer if _t worked where _talk did? Isn't that more in line? True, T: for Template: would make things a little easier for me too. What what do you think it (H:SEARCHING got 10 page views) shows?  Besides, I asked about H:PARAM, but you searched for H:SEARCHING.  I see over 1400 page views for it alone: https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2020-01-01&end=2020-12-31&pages=H:PARAM|H:PARAMETER.  AND THAT'S JUST FOR TWO OF THE TWENTY-SEVEN shortcuts.  What would be more relevant would be a search of search history, or a poll, but really, I would think being in our own shoes would work.  I did describe I want by "adding support for Pseudo-namespaces".  See "hack", now bolded, above.   While "to actually make them namespace aliases" (and have the existing content align with that) would be how many orders of magnitude more work, do you think? --50.201.195.170 (talk) 04:43, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Safari search?
The section on Safari search doesn't seem to work any more. Is there a new way to search Wikipedia easily within the address bar of Safari? Cheers.  Wik idea  10:54, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Desert Cya37 (talk) 16:30, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Making search easier through good page management
Are there any best practices or policies I can refer to on how Wikipedia makes content easier to find using search? I’m thinking particularly about how pages are organised and structured.

For example, are there any best practices on how articles are titled, when a page redirect or disambiguation page should be used, how categories should be structured etc.

I administer an instance of mediawiki, and the biggest criticism I hear is that nobody can find anything with search. Although we’re not using CirrusSearch, I largely put it down to a content structure that wasn’t well thought out and is governed poorly. Dshinks (talk) 20:06, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Honestly, the core MediaWiki search function is not great, and there's probably not a lot you can do about it... That said for your examples, WP:DAB for disambigs (particularly WP:ONEOTHER), WP:CAT for cats (ideally acyclic graph, hopefully not categories with few members), WP:AT and the linked naming conventions for titling. --Izno (talk) 02:55, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

@Izno, thanks very much for those - that’s exactly what I was looking for! Dshinks (talk) 21:31, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

This might help: How to search Wikipedia with Google/Bing

To limit Google or Bing searches to the English Wikipedia, include this in your search string: site:en.wikipedia.org.

You can even do a Google search of Wikipedia from Wikipedia's own search box! For example, to use Google to search for pages with "geology" in the title, type this into WP's search box: google:geology+site:en.wikipedia.org

This link does the same thing: google:geology+site:en.wikipedia.org.

Another way is to use Google's or Bing's advanced settings. (To get there from Google's or Bing's search page, click on the gear icon).

Qwerfjkl  talk  22:15, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

A light novel of the same name, also written by Shinkai, was published a month prior the film's premiere. Your Name premiered at the 2016 Anime Expo
96.4.175.92 (talk) 17:15, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Run n Fly (talk) 17:22, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Deepcategory don't work with hidden category
Search. Category. 194.50.14.172 (talk) 23:45, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It appears to work for me. What makes you say it doesn't work? Be specific as in "I expect X but see Y". PrimeHunter (talk) 09:11, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Today it's work! Thanks. 194.50.14.172 (talk) 19:20, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Upper and lower case greek letters in Regex
If I'm looking for a string which can contain Capital and Lower case greek letters, do I need to split them the way that I do in English or not. In other words, is the equivalent of the latin alphabet ?Naraht (talk) 02:48, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Search with trailing space
I wish to search all articles (and exclude redirects) that start with Dr without the dot after it.

I found the option of searching by excluding redirects using Special:PrefixIndex. However there, I cannot enclose the search term with quotes. If it was allowed, I only had to enter "Dr " with a space. Without quotes, on giving Dr followed by a space, the search seems to be removing the trailing space, and returns all entries that start with "Dr". Note that I had asked the same question in July at WT:Special:PrefixIndex and not got a response. Jay (talk) 05:34, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know a general solution. This hack works in your specific case. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:25, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, this works. Thanks! I see the "DrZ" in the URL. How do I do it? Jay (talk) 19:27, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I added "Z" manually after seeing that "Dr" didn't work. A space is usually sorted before any other character but PrefixIndex apparently sorts space somewhere between "Z" and "a". PrimeHunter (talk) 20:12, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

searching for strings
"String" can have different meanings. For example, if I wish to search for placenames that include the string "borough" it's not clear from this information page how to do this, especially if one wants to make the results easier to navigate by excluding all occurrences of the word "borough". It'd be great if such a search could be executed by typing something like *borough -borough in the search box but it doesn't work. Dadge (talk) 04:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)


 * My 'searching for strings' box has stopped working. For example I typed in France on an article about Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and it doesn't come up with a single instance of the term although it's used multiple times.  Any ideas how to get this very handy tool back? 7dmd7 (talk) 01:40, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It sounds like a feature of your browser or device, not Wikipedia. Is it there and does it work at other websites? Some search features have an option to specify case sensitive search. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Statistics for the search terms used?
Is there any meta- or external source where we can get some statistics on the search terms used within Wikipedia? I know this is possible to do with Google, e.g. using [Google Trends, and I know it's possible to see the page views via the Stats links on the page histories. But is there something that shows search term usage within Wikipedia? [[User:Chumpih|Chumpih.]] (talk) 10:26, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Range of Hebrew letters?
I can regex a range of Greek Letters without a problem. for example insource:/\([Α-Ω]+/ however, I am unable to figure out how to do the equivalent for Hebrew. None of the possibilities seem to work, replacing the A with an א and Z with ת nor doing it the other way around (so that the window thinks it is a single string reading RTL, nor even flipping the [ and ] seem to work, could someone please help me figure out the way to do a search for a parentheses, three quotes and a string of Hebrew letters?Naraht (talk) 14:17, 25 August 2021 (UTC)


 * please ask your search related question over at WP:VPT. This talk page is only for improving the documentation/text of Help:Searching ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:21, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Force cache purge?
I've been doing some maintenance using this whopper of a query; although it has some false positives, it's quite good at finding instances where someone just typed "citation needed" instead of using citation needed. Anyway, I made a huge AWB run and edited a bunch of the pages manually to fix the formatting. Yet if I run the search, I'll still see previews (with the misformatted original source text) for a bunch of articles I know I just fixed. I'm not entirely sure on how the search cache is built -- so this may be a completely impossible task -- but is there any way to tell the search engine that I demand a search of current article text, and not the cached search results from a couple hours ago? jp×g 05:58, 21 November 2021 (UTC)


 * please ask your search related question over at WP:VPT. This talk page is only for improving the documentation/text of Help:Searching ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:21, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:S" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Wikipedia:S and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 21 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:27, 21 March 2022 (UTC)


 * please ask your search related question over at WP:VPT. This talk page is only for improving the documentation/text of Help:Searching ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:21, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Searching for a string *outside* a reference?
Any suggestions for searching for a string only outside of a reference? Naraht (talk) 17:31, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
 * please ask your search related question over at WP:VPT. This talk page is only for improving the documentation/text of Help:Searching ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:21, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Medicago rigidula proposed edit
A proposed edit to the Medicago rigidula Wikipedia page under the Scientific classification. Division/phylum: Tracheophyta, Class: Magnoliopsida, Order: Fabales, Family: Leguminosae/Fabaceae. Crystali18 (talk) 20:32, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

HLHJ (talk) 21:19, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Copying was reverted. Posted to talk page instead. HLHJ (talk) 20:44, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 December 2022 carebears pinball carebears cheers bears pbs kids watching 1998
pbskidscarebearsfamily

pinballfunding watching watchingvhscarebearsfamily1998dvdbluraydiscbookreadcolormakingpinba lpinkrainbownextpinballwatching1998 cheersbearspbskids watchingstorybook storycolor nortecolorwatching1998 drawline watching makercrayoncoloredainchlirdrawcheersbearslovely watching arbook artcolor keybook yoyoy book story watching1998 2601:481:8600:C9C0:29F8:EB18:E08A:14EB (talk) 15:53, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. RealAspects (talk) 15:57, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Regex error when using valid regex
The regex \< *font +class *\= *(\"|\'|)([^"+?);*(\"|\'|) *(color|face|size) ] does not work in search even though it is valid; there are no unclosed parentheses. Am I doing anything wrong here? Sheep  (talk &bull; he/him) 15:52, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I reduced it until it didn't give an error.  with empty after the pipe is apparently disallowed. You can use   for something allowed to be empty. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:13, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Iffy search suggestion ranking after page move
After Macintosh was moved to Mac (computer), page views |Macintosh dropped abruptly by about 50%.

I believe search suggestions could have something to do with it. When I type "Mac" in the search box, Mac (computer) is the 10th suggestion. As I type more letters ("Macin", "Macint"), it disappears, replaced by articles for specific Macintosh models that receive far lower page views than the main article. The main article only appears again when I finish typing the full term ("Macintosh"), due to the redirect at Macintosh.

Could anything be done about this, short of moving the article back? Could the Macintosh redirect be treated as a normal page in the backend, so it shows up in search suggestions without needing an exact match? DFlhb (talk) 02:39, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Unforgiving in namespace names
It occurs to me that the search is more strict in namespace name (prefix) than in title. Given a random typo (my favourite one): Tempalte, compare as namespace and as article title:
 * as title
 * as prefix (does not search for improved prefix then)
 * logged in url's; search history influence not known. -DePiep (talk) 06:42, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Adding to found items
I wanted to find 'SS Andrea Dora' but left off the 'SS', so it wasn't found. How could I help it find it? HuPi (talk) 22:51, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Correction: I should have written 'Andrea Doria', when the search would have succeeded. HuPi (talk) 23:01, 24 April 2023 (UTC)