How search works

Most search boxes look for your words. This one looks for your meaning. Knowing the difference explains why a question in your own words finds passages that share none of them, and why a few situations still call for exact words.

Fingerprints of meaning

Every passage in every library has been turned into a long list of numbers that describes what it is about, something like a fingerprint of its meaning. Passages about the same idea get similar fingerprints, whatever words they use.

When you search, your query gets a fingerprint too, and the search returns the passages whose fingerprints sit closest to yours. The closest comes first. That ordering is the whole of the ranking: there is no weighting by source, speaker or date, and the text of a passage is never changed.

Why the words need not match

Because the comparison is between meanings, a passage does not have to contain any of the words you typed. Ask about feeling distant from God, and passages about loneliness, about being cast off, or about drawing near can all come back, whether or not they use your words. Synonyms, paraphrases and questions all work. A full sentence usually works better than a single word, because it gives the fingerprint more to go on.

When exact words matter

Three things step outside meaning and check the actual text:

• A phrase in straight double quotes must appear in the document, word for word. See Exact phrases with quotes.
• SPEAKER: and AUTHOR: match a name, and TOPIC: needs the exact name of a topic. INCLUDE and EXCLUDE require or remove a quoted phrase. They are all in the Operator cheat sheet.
• A scripture reference such as Moroni 10:4 is looked up directly and shown in a card above the results.

Three settings that shape the list

The "More Filters" button, or "Filters" once you have results, opens the settings. Three of them change how much comes back.

• Accuracy Score, on the Advanced tab. Only passages at least this close to your meaning are shown. The default is 40%. Lower it to see more, and looser, matches; raise it to keep only the closest.
• Passages per source, also on Advanced. By default at most 2 passages come from the same talk or chapter, so one long talk cannot fill the page. Set it to 0 for no limit.
• Time Period, on the Filters tab. By default the search covers every year. A range you set applies only to libraries whose documents carry a date, and only in the browser tab where you set it. The scriptures, Gospel Topics, Hymns and the Apocrypha have no year and always come back in full. See Choosing libraries and years.

By default 20 passages are shown. "How Many Results to Show" on the Filters tab accepts 1 to 100.

Two small rules

• The search needs something to match by meaning. A query that is only a name or an exclusion, such as SPEAKER:Holland on its own, is not sent; a message says "Add a word or phrase to search for alongside the filter." A quoted phrase or a TOPIC: on its own is enough.
• One search runs every three seconds. Send another sooner and it waits and retries on its own.