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msUser327's avatar
msUser327
Copper Contributor
Sep 11, 2019

Search for Exact Phrase does not work

The "Exact Phrase" search option does not work.  The instruction is to include the phrase in quotes.  Example:  If I search for "this exact phrase", the search results include all posts with any of ...
Dean_Gross's avatar
Dean_Gross
Silver Contributor
Apr 30, 2019

when i search using quotes, I don't get results for the desired phrase. e.g., 'service now' or "service now" returns lots of posts with those words, but not with that phrase.

  • Allen's avatar
    Allen
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    Sep 23, 2019

    Hi All,

     

    Thank you my apologies that this has been missed in our review of threads.

     

    So I did a search with terms in quotes and it seemed to work, in that results with this exact phrase were promoted over those which only had one or other of the terms I entered.

     

    Is the issue that your expecting to only get 'exact' matches using the quote marks?

    • SergeiBaklan's avatar
      SergeiBaklan
      MVP
      Sep 27, 2019

      Allen 

      Hi Allan,

       

      I guess that's about exact phrase. I see no difference in search of "service now" and service now

      • msUser327's avatar
        msUser327
        Copper Contributor
        Sep 27, 2019

        SergeiBaklan 

        I replied to him directly via e-mail earlier this week, but I'll reply to him here too so others can see how I responded.

    • msUser327's avatar
      msUser327
      Copper Contributor
      Sep 27, 2019

      Allen 

      Just documenting here the e-mail sent earlier in the week...

      Thanks for taking a look.

      That's correct.  An "exact phrase" search should only return results with the exact phrase,. The results should not include articles that simply have any of the individual words but not the exact phrase searched for.
       
      The Advance search options ("Search Modifiers") include this text:
      Use quotes to search for an "exact phrase".
       
      That suggests that if you search for "a very specific phrase", using the quotes as in the Advance Search example, the results would only be those articles with the exact phrase   [a very specific phrase]  (no brackets) in the text, not results with "a" , "very", "specific", and/or "phrase" (no quotes) anywhere in the text. 
       
      If the "exact phrase" search is really designed to still include anything with the individual words even if the exact phrase never appears, it would be good to add that caveat to the "Use quotes to search for an "exact phrase"." description, maybe change that to "Use quotes to search for an "exact phrase"; articles with the individual words will still be included." so it's not misleading.  It would be more helpful though if an exact phrase search were really just an exact phrase search. 

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