Help:Searching

To navigate to a page instead of search, remember to type the page name into the usual search box there (on any page).

As is normal for web search engines:

For more information on the search box, see Search engine features, below. For searching for other than a page name, such as searching a page history, or for other content, see Special searches below. offers several search options, and offers the setups of other users.

You land on the page Search by way of:

In the search results:

Search results will often be accompanied by a preliminary report.

The Search page is designed for presenting and refining results in a re-search loop controlled by modifying the query or clicking on a search domain.

In order to fully interpret the search results page, check which search domain is in black font, but also remember to check for a namespace name at the beginning or a prefix: parameter at the end of the search box query:

Equivalently, you could check the URL in your browser's address bar for profile and namespace parameter settings, because the search query was sent to the search engine by way of that URL.

Beyond setting the search domain to refine your search results, see Search engine features below for using the search box to achieve a high level of refinement by filtering and ranking results.

There is a  → tab. (You must be logged in.)

The default search domain is article space, but any user can change this default, and have their own default search domain for all the queries they run. In any case a query always can specify a namespace to make the search domain explicit and override any default. At the search results page, , Advanced dialog, a search can specify any number of namespaces, and a logged-in users can set their default search domain there by clicking "Remember selection for future searches".

Visit your  → page (requires JavaScript) to set up:

The search results page can open in a new tab. See  → Browsing There are also custom user-scripts to make all search results always open in a new tab. (See the scripts available in See also.)

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