One of our trending search terms on our forum is status:public with no CTR. What do these searches mean, and why are they happening?

Sorry for the delayed reply to this. Entries in your Trending Search Terms report that have their term set to status:public can be created if a user selects this search filter on the search form: [image] If they then click the “Search” button without entering any additional terms, a search entry will be created with its term set to status:public. Another way the entry could be generated would be if users were clicking on a link that had that filter set, but no other search terms. For example, clicking this link will generate a search log entry with its term set to status:public: https://meta.discourse.org/search?expanded=true&q=status%3Apublic. Is it possible that you have a link in that form somewhere on the internet that users could be clicking?

[image] Simon Cossar: Is it possible that you have a link in that form somewhere on the internet that users could be clicking? As far as we are aware, there is no link on the internet with this. We have searched and have also found nothing.

In a similar vein, Meta has this as one of its top searches: [image] Not sure if that helps narrow anything down?

Just guessing, are there any theme components that use the search endpoint to get a list of topics to display? Or perhaps there is another website embedding a list of public topics and it’s using that endpoint to get the list?

No theme components and no website that we are aware of. It’s very possible there is an endpoint somewhere out there causing these searches, but we have searched and found nothing.

What are status:public searches?

Product Support

JammyDodger July 1, 2022, 9:26am 5

In a similar vein, Meta has this as one of its top searches:

Not sure if that helps narrow anything down?

Topic		Replies	Views
Search Logs Page Announcements	20	3718	April 11, 2018
Clicking new topic on advanced search page doesn’t use search term Feature	6	784	March 5, 2018
What is the {search_term_string} in search results UX search	3	4746	August 21, 2024
Searching public topics and PMs simultaneously and set this option as the default Feature search	13	1128	December 20, 2025
Search logs should ignore OpenSearch placeholder terms and optionally tag AI-agent searches Feature search , dashboard-reports	0	224	February 6, 2026

What are status:public searches?

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