The search is returning dozens of matches rather than exact matches. It is also ignoring limit parameters placed in the Advanced Search. e.g., there was an interesting Subreddit posting and I wanted to check if that username was already mentioned in postings on our forums. So I searched for the ve…

[image] emyoulation: But it should report the end of the few (or no) exact matches, and clearly indicating the beginning of semantic AI results. I’ve heard this feedback from a few different places now, so I’ve added a little messaging around it to clarify [image] [image]

If there are very few matches, we expand search to include semantic AI results which is why you’re seeing partial matches on Meta. [image] emyoulation: Then I went into the Private Messages to do the same search. And it found the same results… that were Public threads, not messages. Hmm yeah…

[image] awesomerobot: If there are very few matches, we expand search to include semantic AI results which is why you’re seeing partial matches on Meta. That is probably a reasonable fallback behavior. But it should report the end of the few (or no) exact matches, and clearly indicating the …

[image] emyoulation: should report the end of the few (or no) exact matches It kind of does that. [IMG_7382] The really disappointing fact is that it should at least have found this topic as the first result. It’s not a PM but it does contain an exact match. Another thing. I think “AI res…

Odd. That does not happen on our site … nor did it happen in my test here. But of course, the results will no longer have a “no results” for the test case… once this thread works its way into the indexed content. The “Discobot discoveries” is not something that appears to be active on the site.

[image] emyoulation: The “Discobot discoveries” is not something that appears to be active on the site. Ahh. I see. (Although the Discobot search must be an addon that we don’t have installed?) It is in the search preview here. But the results AFTER pressing Enter do not indicate the divi…

[image] emyoulation: here. But of course, the results will no longer have a “no results” for the test case No. It is in there. But if you search “in:messages” then it switches to “AI” which does not find it. If you search in regular topics then it does find it… :roll_eyes: [IMG_7384]

[image] RGJ: No. It is in there. I am sorry to contradict but, No. It is not in our free (for open source projects) site hosting by the Discourse organization. I just re-tested in both the forums and the Private Messaging. The screen capture I pasted above (that DID have it) was the re-test …

[image] emyoulation: I am sorry to contradict but I was (obviously) referring to this topic in this forum.

[image] emyoulation: [image] awesomerobot: If there are very few matches, we expand search to include semantic AI results which is why you’re seeing partial matches on Meta. That is probably a reasonable fallback behavior. But it should report the end of the few (or no) exact matches, and…

[image] Falco: Our reasoning is that expand search automatically covers a lot of situations, like searching in another language (our semantic search is multilingual), typos, synonyms, etc In that case, the search would benefit from an Advanced Search option to not do that. There are times (ma…

Discourse's search broken? It is returning 'similar'/'partial' matches rather than 'exact' matches

Support

awesomerobot (Kris) March 23, 2026, 10:31pm 13

I’ve heard this feedback from a few different places now, so I’ve added a little messaging around it to clarify

Topic		Replies	Views
Search within topic is omitting results Bug	22	5081	June 2, 2017
Search for posts gives wrong/incomplete results Support	5	608	September 26, 2018
Discourse needs better search Feature search	39	1671	July 10, 2025
Difficulties with search - not finding a topic with the same title as search query Support search	8	1179	May 4, 2023
Does the current discourse support "partial match search" in topic's title? Support	4	559	August 23, 2021

Discourse's search broken? It is returning 'similar'/'partial' matches rather than 'exact' matches

Related topics