# How does Ghost smart search work?

**URL:** <https://forum.ghost.org/t/how-does-ghost-smart-search-work/41767>\
**Category:** Bugs\
**Created:** [October 10, 2023, 9:21am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/how-does-ghost-smart-search-work/41767 "2023-10-10T09:21:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aabulkhairov](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/aabulkhairov/32/5292_2.png) [@aabulkhairov](https://forum.ghost.org/u/aabulkhairov)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 9:21am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/how-does-ghost-smart-search-work/41767/1 "2023-10-10T09:21:33Z")

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For example, I’m trying to search for “proximity” which exists as a word in one my articles on a Ghost-powered portal: [https://how.spatial.chat/knowledge-base/](https://how.spatial.chat/knowledge-base/)

 ![Screenshot 2023-10-10 at 12.20.34](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/ghost2/original/3X/c/2/c2c3af46efcf431278aba0305cf9e8148900272f.jpeg)

## But searching for the keyword doesn’t find anything Does Ghost search look for words inside a Post?

**Issue Summary**

- Explain roughly what’s wrong
- What did you expect to happen?

**Steps to Reproduce**

1. This is the first step…
2. This is the second step, etc.

* * *

## Setup information

**Ghost Version**  
Ghost 5.60

**Node.js Version**  
Node 16.17.0

**How did you install Ghost?**  
_Provide some details about your install of Ghost if you are self-hosting._

**Provide details of your host & operating system**  
_Include further details about your hosting and OS._

**Database type**  
_MySQL 5.7 / MySQL 8 / SQLite 3 / Other_

**Browser & OS version**  
_Include if reporting frontend bugs._

**Relevant log / error output**  
`Copy and paste any relevant log output. Use backticks to format this into code.`

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jannis](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/jannis/32/39718_2.png) [@jannis](https://forum.ghost.org/u/jannis)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 9:41am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/how-does-ghost-smart-search-work/41767/2 "2023-10-10T09:41:32Z")

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Super interesting question! Searches are always tricky to implement, because of the sheer amount of data available.

Having had a look at the [documentation](https://ghost.org/docs/themes/search/#technical-details), Ghost only uses the title and excerpts – and only builds the search index on the last 10,000 posts. In my opinion, a pretty good compromise between speed and depth of the index.

To give you some context, implementing a full-text search across all content can be quite resource-intensive. Factors like indexing every word, handling synonym recognition, and ranking results can quickly become super complex.

As a reference, in my day job, our full-text search for around 10,000 articles requires a dedicated virtual server equipped with 8GB memory and a powerful CPU.

Considering that Ghost aims to remain lightweight and accessible, focusing the search on titles and excerpts is a sensible decision, I think. It ensures efficiency without overburdening the infrastructure of small blogs 😃

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![aabulkhairov](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/aabulkhairov/32/5292_2.png) [@aabulkhairov](https://forum.ghost.org/u/aabulkhairov)\
**Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 7:58am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/how-does-ghost-smart-search-work/41767/3 "2023-10-11T07:58:14Z")

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That made sense, @jannis!

Thank you, now we will make sure that keywords are added into excerpt parts of the post for better indexing.

Apreciating the explanation

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/ghost2/original/2X/b/ba9ce5100b8bb264586f4f572545596b2ce3f081.png) [@system](https://forum.ghost.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2024, 7:58am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/how-does-ghost-smart-search-work/41767/4 "2024-01-09T07:58:22Z")

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