# Reducing \`min search term length\` to 2?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/reducing-min-search-term-length-to-2/256165>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [February 24, 2023, 1:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reducing-min-search-term-length-to-2/256165 "2023-02-24T13:58:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![rahim123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@rahim123](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rahim123)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2023, 1:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reducing-min-search-term-length-to-2/256165/1 "2023-02-24T13:58:28Z")

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Hi there, our forum has quite a few 2-character technical keywords. For now I kept my `min search term length` at the default of 3. This is fine for site-wide searches, because if an additional search term \>=3 chars is added it appears that it does also weight the 2-char terms for the results. But on-page searches for 2-char terms in long threads that haven’t been fully loaded into the buffer can be a problem. Ideally it would be nice if the Discourse inner-topic search would work for 2 characters, but it appears there’s some reason why it hasn’t been implemented yet:

- [In-topic search: Is that possible to relax the minimum search character to 2?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/in-topic-search-is-that-possible-to-relax-the-minimum-search-character-to-2/50842)
- [Two-letter in topic search does not seem to work - #5 by codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/t/two-letter-in-topic-search-does-not-seem-to-work/42409/5)

Meanwhile, how much of a hit would it take on the server in terms of processing time and database size if the `min search term length` were reduced to `2` on a large English language forum?

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reducing-min-search-term-length-to-2/256165)._