# Changing the default 'sort by' setting for search
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [February 1, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847 "2016-02-01T20:13:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@john\_mardlin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/john_mardlin)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/1 "2016-02-01T20:13:56Z")
Is it possible to have the default search order be `order:latest`, either as a user preference or globally on an instance of Discourse?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2016, 12:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/2 "2016-02-23T00:21:38Z")
Sorry for the delay… no this is not possible, but I could add a site setting for it.
I also usually prefer `order:latest` as a default for stuff I am searching for. Cause I like to use search to recall a topic I recently looked at.
Another option could be to give significantly more weight to recent stuff while leaving it as a “smart search” But… to be honest … maybe `order:latest` is simply a better default… @codinghorror?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2016, 12:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/3 "2016-02-23T00:41:27Z")
I favor weighting recent stuff a bit more, personally. `order:latest` as a default would be awfully strong.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 4:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/4 "2016-11-21T04:17:05Z")
It would be nice to have a simpler search shortcut for `order:latest` even a single character, as that is a lot to type plus a colon.
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### Author:  [@alehandrof](https://meta.discourse.org/u/alehandrof)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2018, 10:19am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/5 "2018-10-02T10:19:20Z")
Both my users and myself find having to use the “latest post” to find what we need. We are probably a niche case because we have a lot of topics with the same keywords, so searching often good-naturedly surfaces old, but seemingly relevant topics. I’d appreciate the option to make “latest” the system default. It would help us a lot. I’m not suggesting it should be the default in general 🙂
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2018, 10:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/6 "2018-10-02T10:22:55Z")
There is already a one character shortcut to order by latest; just add “l” to your search and it will be ordered latest. So instead of searching for
`hotdogs`
search for
`hotdogs l`
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### Author:  [@alehandrof](https://meta.discourse.org/u/alehandrof)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2018, 12:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/7 "2018-10-02T12:05:43Z")
I wasn’t aware of that shortcut. That’s helpful for me, though I already have an Alfred search that does what I need.
For my users though, it would be better to change the default behavior of the forum. It’s been requested a lot of times, and I’ve seen users use the forum over screen sharing as they try to find some piece of information tucked away in a post.
Again, I’m not suggesting this is a good practice for most forums, but because we have a lot of similarly named topics, it would help with retrieval.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2018, 8:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/8 "2018-10-02T20:09:47Z")
> [@alehandrof](#):
>
> because we have a lot of similarly named topics, it would help with retrieval.
Google and other webcrawlers will struggle with this as well, I strongly suggest you should fix the root cause here and have more uniquely named topics.
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### Author:  [@alehandrof](https://meta.discourse.org/u/alehandrof)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2018, 9:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/9 "2018-10-08T09:14:10Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> Google and other webcrawlers will struggle with this as well, I strongly suggest you should fix the root cause here and have more uniquely named topics.
We are a private community and don’t care about SEO. The root cause is have repeating events with the same title. For example, we have a lot of topics like this: “XYZ (October 2018”).
I understand that we’re a niche case. But it would be helpful to have the option for just such niche cases.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/10 "2018-10-09T03:18:42Z")
I think adding a site setting that allows you to pick default site sort order would be useful in some cases:
I agree with @codinghorror 100% that our default of “Relevance” is correct, but can see cases where there is a very strong preference for latest (either post or topic).
I am not keen on making this a strong per user setting quite yet though. @codinghorror should we slot adding this site setting, or wait on this for a bit?
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2023, 7:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-the-default-sort-by-setting-for-search/38847/11 "2023-04-19T07:14:27Z")
Closed to focus discussion in [Add site setting to default search results sort by latest post instead of relevance](https://meta.discourse.org/t/default-search-results-sort-by-latest-post-instead-of-relevance/140294)