Help:Searching
- For help finding general information, see Wikipedia:Questions, or try asking a volunteer at the Wikipedia:Reference Desk.
Wikipedia has a search engine whose interface is the search box located at the top right of the standard skin. On other skins it is usually placed in the toolbox in the leftmost column. This search box is on every page, and it has a magnifying glass icon in, or has a Go button and a Search button, depending on the user preference to enable a simplified search box or not. If the words you enter match a page name in the database, you will navigate (or Go) directly to that page. Otherwise it will perform a search of the database and display as many close matches as it can on a page that is a list of search results.
On that search results page there are two search boxes, the usual one, and a new one strictly for refining the list of search results. The search box in the usual position will either navigate (or Go) directly to a page, or it will display search results. In the usual search box, to get a list of search results only, click on the last item in the (JavaScript enabled) drop-down list which says "containing...", or use the "~" character (see Syntax below), or press the Search button. The other search box, on top of the search results, has a Search button and is strictly for refining the query to get better search results, not for navigating directly to a page. If your browser has JavaScript enabled, a drop-down list of suggestions that match page names on Wikipedia will appear while you type in either search box.
A special page for starting a mouse-driven refinement of search results is at Special:Search, but the same interface appears on the search results page. While the search box is empty, clicking on the magnifying glass (or performing a "null search") will take you there. There you can modify search results by clicking on areas of Wikipedia, or click on "Advanced" for searching precise namespaces or searching for redirects.
Clicking the magnifying glass icon (or pressing the Go button) is equivalent to pressing the ↵ Enter key. For more information on the command line interface and the keyboard shortcuts, see Search engine features, below.
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Search results page
You can get to the search results page by entering what is not a page name, or by doing a null search (clicking the magnifying glass, or pressing Go). The list of search results will show the important terms highlighted in bold lettering, and order the results based on relevance or user settings. The use of the usual search box while on the search results page defeats the purpose of the page.
There are two search boxes because the usual search box is on every page, but the intent of the search results page is to use the newly placed search box to refine a list of results. There are several ways to accomplish this, either with the mouse or by query commands typed into the search box. For example, if you want to see more terms highlighted use "OR", and if you want to remove results use "-". (See Syntax below.)
On a search results page, it will advise There is a page named pagename on Wikipedia when there is a direct link to an article in the search box. A message box on the right of a search result in the list may show up, indicating that that page is linked to a sister page on another project, such as a Wiktionary entry tied to that Wikipedia page, but this only happens for articles in the list.
Articles are in the main namespace, or "article space", but Special:Statistics will show that there are many times more pages on Wikipedia than there are articles on Wikipedia. Other types of pages are in other namespaces, and these can be searched by clicking on one of the filter activation "links" in the grey frame just below the search box:
- If Multimedia is selected, the File namespace reveals page names with matching images, videos and songs. It matches all content in the titles shown, denoted "File:pagename", including filenames and their descriptions.
- If Help and Project pages is selected, the resulting titles will start with "Help:" and "Wikipedia:", indicating namespaces that contain help pages, Wikipedia guidelines and policies, and most other pages used for the Wikipedia project maintenance and administration.
- If Everything is selected, the entire database is searched, and there are about twenty-six namespaces, but only four others besides articles are commonly searched: Wikipedia, Help, Template, and Category.
- If Advanced is selected, the gray frame expands to reveal all the namespaces, each with a check-box indicating the search status.
To use your web browser's web-search box to interface the Wikipedia search engine, see Help:Searching from a web browser. This trick removes the need to first navigate to Wikipedia from a web page, and then do the search or navigation. It is a is temporary change, and then you put it back to your preferred web-search engine. Say while on some web page, you decide to research, at Wikipedia, material on that web page. You change your web browser's web-search box to Wikipedia, and enter the page name or the query while on that web page. The other example is that you decide to contribute material from the web to Wikipedia. Furthermore, you can reach all twelve sister projects the same way. For example, you can go straight to a Wiktionary entry by using the the prefix wikt: from your web-search box.
To learn all the command-line queries that don't need the mouse, such as "namespace: intitle: word1 OR word2", see the next section. To acquire a default set of namespaces that you always search, create an account, and set your default namespaces to search by activating the "Preferences" link at the top of every page.
Search engine features
The internal search engine can search for parts of page titles or page title prefixes, and in specific categories and namespaces. It can also limit a search to pages with specific words in the title or located in specific categories or namespaces. It can handle parameters an order of magnitude more sophisticated than most external search engines, including user-specified words with variable endings and similar spellings. When presenting results, the internal search understands and will link to relevant sections of a page (although to a limited degree some other search engines may do this as well).
The internal search is also able to search all pages for project purposes, whereas external search engines cannot be used on any talk page, a large part of projectspace, and any page tagged as noindex.
The source text (as shown in the edit box) is searched for. This distinction is relevant for piped links, for interlanguage links (to find links to Chinese articles, search for zh, not for Zhongwen), special characters (if ê is coded as ê it is found searching for ecirc), etc. Entering an article title will jump to that article; to display a list of matches to the search term instead, prefixing the search term with "-" or "~" (see "Avoiding automatic direction to page" below) will force a full search.
Upper and lower case as well as some diacritical marks such as umlauts and accents are disregarded in search. For example, a search for citroen will find pages containing the word Citroën (c = C, e = ë). Some ligatures match the separate letters. For example, a search for aeroskobing will find pages containing Ærøskøbing (ae = Æ).
Many non-alphanumerical characters are ignored. It is not possible to search for the string |LT| (letters "LT" between two vertical bars) as used in some convert templates for long tons; all articles with "lt" will be returned. Some characters are treated differently; "Credit (finance)" will return articles with the words "credit" and "finance", ignoring the parentheses, unless an article with exact title "Credit (finance)" exists.
Syntax
The following features can be used to refine searches. Many of these links are a {{search link}}. (Search link is not guaranteed to exactly emulate the search box.)
- Phrases in double quotes – A phrase can be found by enclosing it in double quotes, "like this". Double quotes can define a single search term that contains spaces. For example, "holly dolly" where the space is a character, differs much from holly dolly where the space is interpreted as a logical AND.
- Boolean search – All major search engines provide the "-" character for "logical not", the AND, the OR, and the grouping parenthesis. Logical OR can be specified by spelling it out (in capital letters), but the AND operator is assumed between every term (as the space between terms), yet AND also works the same spelled out. Parentheses are a necessary feature because (blue OR red) AND green differs from blue OR (red AND green).
- Exclusion – Terms can be excluded with by prefixing a dash (-), which is "logical not". For example while -refining -unwanted search results. For example payment card -"credit card" finds all articles with payment and card, but not "credit card".
- Wildcard search – A wildcard character *, standing for any length of character-string can prefix or suffix a word or string: *like will return "childlike" and "dream-like"; this*, returns results like "thistle". For example, the query *stan lists articles like Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.
- Search fuzzily – Spelling relaxation occurs by suffixing a tilde (~) like this~, with results like "thus" and "thins". For example, searching for james~ watt~ would return James Watt, James Wyatt, and James Watts. A mnemonic: <search>-ish.
- Search results! – Prefixing a tilde ~like this query always gives search results, never a single title. It functions as the keyboard shortcut to clicking on the "containing" option. For example, ~similiar finds pages with the misspelling, instead of being redirected to Similarity. Making tilde the first character disables a redirect. There will be no disambiguation page, no article, no single page as a result. A mnemonic: "wave of <search results>"
Parameters
The three main search parameters are prefix, intitle, and incategory. These are named filters, followed by a colon, as in "filter:query string". The query string may be a term, or a phrase, or part or all of a page name, as ascribed below. The filters accept Boolean operators between them. A single "namespace:" filter can go first, and a single "prefix" filter can go last, as explained below.
- intitle: – "Intitle:query" prioritizes the search results by title, but it also shows the usual matches in title's contents. Multiple "intitle" filters may be used with Boolean operators between, such as "intitle: speed OR intitle: velocity".
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Query Description intitle:airport All articles with airport in their title parking intitle: airport Articles with "parking" in their text and "airport" in their title intitle: international airport Articles containing "international" AND "airport" in their title (including Airports Council International) intitle: "international airport" Articles with the phrase "international airport" in their title
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- incategory: – Given as "incategory:category", where category is the pagename of a category page, it lists pages with [[Category:pagename]] in their wikitext. (Editors searching in namespaces other than mainspace will need to know the limitations these search results may contain.) Space characters in a pagename can be replaced with an underscore instead of using double quotes; either way works, and even both at once works. "Incategory:" will also return pages in the adjacent subcategory; see for example, "category: incategory: History". Multiple "incategory" filters may be applied. A more graphical alternative to a single filter is at Special:CategoryTree. Because categories are important structures for searching for related articles, any use of this prefix is particularly effective for searching. For more on using the categories themselves to find articles, see Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories.
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Query Description ammonia incategory: German_chemists Starting with the articles listed at Category: German chemists, only the ones that have the word "ammonia" in their text incategory: "Suspension bridges in the United States" incategory: Bridges_in_New_York_City Articles that are common to both categories — the suspension bridges in New York City
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- namespace name: or All: – Given only at the beginning of the query, a namespace name followed by a colon limits search results to that namespace. It is a filter without a query string. "All:" searches all namespaces. Namespace aliases are accepted. A reader searching for articles from the search box need know nothing about namespaces, so the default user preferences are set to search only in article space; but an advancing editor can reset the default search-space preference to a particular namespace, or "all".
- prefix: – Given only at the last part of a search box query, "prefix:page name" refers to matching only the beginning characters of a page name. It treats each character entirely literally. The next character after the colon cannot be a space. Any space character in the query must be left bare, and that is why it is the last string in the query. The namespace portion of the page name must use the full name, (it may not be the alias of a namespace). Prefix is a powerful filter when used with other filters. The singular alternative is at Special:PrefixIndex.
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Query Description Salvage wreck prefix: USS Articles containing the words salvage and wreck whose title starts with the characters "USS" wave particle prefix:Talk:Speed of light Speed of light talk pages with the the terms "particle" and "wave", including the current and the archived talk pages wave particle prefix:Talk:Speed of light/ Same search, but only in the archived subpages "portal namespace" readers prefix:Wikipedia talk: Is equivalent to 'Wikipedia talk: "portal namespace" readers' Talk: "heat reservoir" OR "ocean current" Any discussion page in the entire encyclopedia with either of those phrases, including archived discussions language prefix:Portal:Chi Portal namespace page names that begin with "Portal:Chi" and have the word language in the page
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Note that the space characters are not very important except around "prefix". The query string of "incategory" is a page name (or "a category name"), and in a page name, the underscore is equivalent to space, and so underscore will suffice instead of the double quotes around the pagename with spaces in it. The "intitle" query is is not a page name, but it also treats space and underscore equally, treating them as AND. (It even treats multiple spaces, and even mixes of spaces and underscores that way.) All filters can have between them multiple spaces (or underscores) (or a mix) without effecting search results. Multiple spaces are treated as a single space everywhere except around "prefix". (Namely, within and around Boolean operated terms, even if inside double quotes; in between adjacent filters; in page names; in starting characters of the search box query; in between the colon and the prefix parameter names "incategory", "intitle", or "all", or after that colon). "Prefix:" or a namespace name (or its alias) can have no space between its name and the following colon. And remember, "prefix:" is entirely literal after its colon, and so treats no space character, except as a space.
Stemming
All search words are automatically subject to stemming. There is a stemming: parameter but it changes no search result. Stemming may be deactivated by using double quotes. Stemming is a convention among search engines. See the following examples:
| Query | Description |
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| intitle:bär | All articles with "bär" or "baer" or "bar" or "bars" in their title. |
| intitle:"bär" | Articles containing "bär" in their title |
| intitle:bar | All articles with "bar" or "bär" or "bár" or "bars" in their title. |
| intitle:"bar" | same result as without double quotes |
Using the search to directly get to a page
When using the search to directly get to a page, it doesn't matter whether you enter capitals or lower case letters (unless there are two article titles which differ only in capitalization). Umlauts and accents are also disregarded, but ligatures do not match the separate letters.
Specialized uses of the search to directly get to a page include the following:
- To navigate to a section of a page using anchor notation. For example, Poland#History.
- To navigate to a special page, including one with a parameter following a slash. For example, Special:Log/Example.
- To navigate directly to a page on another language Wikipedia or Wikimedia project, using the appropriate interwiki prefix; some other prefixes work too. For example, enter fr:France to go to the article "France" on French Wikipedia, or wikt:help to see the Wiktionary entry for the word "help".
- To go quickly to the user contributions of an IP address – just enter the address. For example, 123.45.56.89.
Specialist searches
External link URL search - Special:LinkSearch is a tool for searching for URLs in external links in Wikipedia pages. For example, the page [[Special:LinkSearch/*.yahoo.com]] lists all Wikipedia pages linking to Yahoo.com.
External search engines – see Wikipedia:External search engines and Wikipedia:Tools#Searching
Other languages – for searching other language editions of Wikipedia see wikipedia.org and the links above.
Toolserver – there are multiple tools on Toolserver, most notably:
- Grep (alternative) — search page titles using regular expressions. Notably, they can search exact names, including punctuation marks and lower / upper cases. For example, to find titles containing "(Company", type "\(Company".
- CatScan — powerful search using categories, included templates, etc.
- Wikimedia-Search
If you cannot find what you are looking for
If you're looking for a place where wine comes from pronounced "Bordo", you can try searching for a more general article such as "Wine", "Wine regions" (returning "List of wine-producing regions") or other wine types such as "Burgundy" and see if it's mentioned there or follow links (in this case, to "Burgundy wine", which has several mentions of "Bordeaux", and links to "French wine" and "Bordeaux wine"). If you know it's in France, look at "France" or the Category:Cities in France, from where you can easily find Bordeaux. You can try various things depending upon the particular case; for "Bordo" wine, it's quite likely that the first letters are "bord", so search an article you've landed on for these letters. If you use Google to search Wikipedia, and click on "cache" at the bottom of any result in the search engine results page, you'll see the word(s) that you searched for highlighted in context.
For an overview of how to find and navigate Wikipedia content, see Portal:Contents. If you're looking for a straight definition of a word, try our sister project Wiktionary.
If there is no appropriate page on Wikipedia, consider creating a page, since you can edit Wikipedia right now. Or consider adding what you were looking for to the Requested articles page.
If you have a question, then see Where to ask questions, which is a list of departments where our volunteers answer questions, any question you can possibly imagine.
A common mistake is to type a question into the search bar and expect an answer; some Web search tools such as Ask Jeeves support this. The Wikipedia search is a text search only; questions, as such, can be asked at the reference desk and similar places. A search for how do clocks work? will return articles with the words how, do, clocks, and work, ignoring the question mark (in practice this can lead to articles answering simple questions).
Delay in updating the search index
For reasons of efficiency and priority, recent changes are not always immediately taken into account in searches. The index is typically updated every morning GMT. If you see the index lagging more than a couple of days, report it. For other technical issues with the search engine, please leave a message on the talk page.
Open search result lists and search suggestions in new tabs
Search suggestions and search result lists can be opened in a new tab with Ctrl-click (PC) or Command-click (Mac). This can be enabled in "my preferences" here: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets - in the browsing section at the top. On the Commons you can enable this in "my preferences" here.
Or they can be set to automatically open in new browser tabs. See commons:MediaWiki talk:Search-results-new-tab.js. Copy the JavaScript (JS) import code from the top of that page. Paste it in your personal common.js (Special:MyPage/common.js). It can be pasted in common.js on any Wikimedia Project, or any Wikipedia in any language.
The same is true for other wikis for importing the ability to open in a new tab with Ctrl-click (PC) or Command-click (Mac). For more info go here.
More search scripts
See Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts#Search for some other scripts registered users can install.
See also
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