# Some inconsistencies in search results

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-inconsistencies-in-search-results/119395>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [June 3, 2019, 3:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-inconsistencies-in-search-results/119395 "2019-06-03T15:54:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![Chris\_Holdgraf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/chris_holdgraf/32/123499_2.png) [@Chris\_Holdgraf](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Chris_Holdgraf)\
**Post date:** [June 3, 2019, 3:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-inconsistencies-in-search-results/119395/1 "2019-06-03T15:54:10Z")

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Hey all - I’m trying to wrap my head around how search results are generated and am running into some weird inconsistencies, I’d be appreciative if folks could point me in the right direction!

## What I’m trying to do

I’m generating a monthy “this week in our project” report about activity in the project. It pulls from many sources, like GitHub and Discourse. I’d like to do the following:

1. Get a list of all new Discourse posts within a specific range of time (e.g. 2019-05-01 → 2019-05-31)
2. Get a list of all Discourse topics that were commented on during this range of time
3. Provide a short list of “most active topics” as well as a list of “most active new topics” with links to our Discourse
4. (ideally, but can’t figure out how) Provide a list of new and active users on the Discourse site

## Where I’m getting confused

I’m generating this report programmatically (w/ python) so have been looking into the Discourse API for this. It seems like the `/search` endpoint is the only way to request data within a range of dates (as opposed to using `posts.json` etc). However, the results that this endpoint returns seem to be off.

As an example, here are a few results, in each case I’m searching _only_ for date ranges, no keywords:

- If I search for `after:2019-05-01 before:2019-05-03`, then it returns **15 results**
- If I search for `after:2019-05-03 before:2019-05-05` then it returns **11 results**
- If I search for `after:2019-05-01 before:2019-05-05` then it returns **20 results**

This confuses me, because I assume that the third search (which includes the full span of dates in the 1st and 2nd search) would return 15+11 = 26 results, instead of 20.

Could somebody explain this behavior to me? Or point me to a resource that goes into the search information more deeply?

Or more generally, I am open to “Chris you’re going about this the wrong kind of way, there’s a better way of getting this information” responses as well 🙂\*

\*with the exception of “pay for the data exporter” plugin - I’m coming from an open source community w/o a ton of resources, and while I’m working on getting buy-in from folks to pay for a version of Discourse, we’re not there yet 😉

(thanks for reading this slightly long post!)

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-inconsistencies-in-search-results/119395)._