# Search options : choose default search «sort by» option in admin
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [23 בנובמבר, 2018, 9:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581 "2018-11-23T09:17:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ixeft](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ixeft)
#### Post date: [23 בנובמבר, 2018, 9:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581/1 "2018-11-23T09:17:55Z")
Hello,
Most of our users a complaining of not finding the right topics when searching, and myself I most of the time change the sort by option to «recent message» to find what I want.
Can it be possible to add to the admin panel an options to choose which is the search sortby option by default ?
Regards,
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [23 בנובמבר, 2018, 7:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581/2 "2018-11-23T19:32:16Z")
Add the search term “l” (lowercase L) to quickly force that sort. Like so:
`apples l`
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [4 באוגוסט, 2019, 9:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581/3 "2019-08-04T09:50:16Z")
Perhaps I don’t understand. This doesn’t work here with “#howto l”. Should that give me the items in that tag sorted by latest tag?
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [4 באוגוסט, 2019, 11:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581/4 "2019-08-04T11:45:05Z")
Try adding an actual search term, if you want to browse a category visit the category.
---
### Author:  [@TallTrees](https://meta.discourse.org/u/TallTrees)
#### Post date: [11 בספטמבר, 2021, 5:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581/5 "2021-09-11T05:51:24Z")
I know this is a really old topic, but does the “search prefer recent posts” setting go someway to achieve this? Or is that purely as a speed optimisation?
The situation I am in is that the forum I run is 5+ years old. Content is about local issues and events. The default search ordering by ‘relevance’ often turns up old topics, encouraging them to be resurrected, rather than pointing at (possibly shorter) newer topics which are more useful and relevant to current discussion.
I guess ideally there would be a slider where relevance can be set to take age as a negative weighting, so that newer topics can be favoured to some extend - in a forum about local issues, newer is often more relevant.
However, an option to set the default search order would also be a good start. Perhaps a theme component could be made to do this if no core setting exists?
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [23 באוקטובר, 2021, 5:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581/6 "2021-10-23T05:51:52Z")
Add the “l” search shortcut for latest.
Searching for “orange” and “orange l” will give you the latest posts first in the latter case.
---
### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [19 באפריל, 2023, 7:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-options-choose-default-search-sort-by-option-in-admin/102581/7 "2023-04-19T07:12:39Z")
Closed to focus the 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)