# Should search prioritize recent topics over older topics?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/should-search-prioritize-recent-topics-over-older-topics/19099>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [8월 20, 2014, 4:00오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/should-search-prioritize-recent-topics-over-older-topics/19099 "2014-08-20T16:00:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 34

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![TechnoBear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/technobear/32/40546_2.png) [@TechnoBear](https://meta.discourse.org/u/TechnoBear)\
**Post date:** [8월 21, 2014, 11:51오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/should-search-prioritize-recent-topics-over-older-topics/19099/34 "2014-08-21T11:51:40Z")

</div>

I was searching for the “Consolidating Activity Field” thread. I couldn’t remember the title, but I remembered the discussion about “heatmap” and “coldmap” - and I couldn’t find the thread searching for those terms. It didn’t appear anywhere in the results. My search terms were not in the title - and that’s very often the case; more often than not, I would imagine. (Only one topic in the results for “heatmap” _does_ have the word in the title.) If I’d remembered that I’d posted in it, I might have found it via my profile, but it was a very brief post and I didn’t remember it.

This is a very recent thread which I had been following, and yet I couldn’t locate it. What chance would I have a month from now, with an even hazier recollection of the details? As a moderator, I very often want to refer members to relevant threads, and I need a reliable way to find them. I have grave concerns that Discourse search is not nearly reliable enough.

The fact that @DaveMaxwell kindly undertook to find the topic for me after I’d given up, and ran into the same difficulties, suggests that there is, indeed, a problem with Search and not just with the searchers.

I should be most grateful if improvements to search could be prioritised, as I otherwise anticipate major problems in a forum the size of ours.

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/should-search-prioritize-recent-topics-over-older-topics/19099)._