Site search

This documentation is changing during the beta

SCNX Sites is in active beta, and we're changing a lot of things as we go. We'll be reworking this documentation once the current beta cycle wraps up, so some details on this page may be outdated in the meantime.

Site search lets visitors find things on your site without clicking through the menu. It adds a search box to your navigation bar and your blog, plus a results page at /search.

Turning search on

1. Open Settings in the Sites menu.
2. In the Search & sharing card, switch on Enable site search.

Search is on for new sites. Sites that existed before this feature stay off until you turn it on yourself. The switch applies right away. You do not have to publish your site again.

/search must be free

Site search owns the /search address. If one of your pages or redirects already uses /search, search cannot be turned on until you delete or rename it. You will see a message saying so. For the same reason, you cannot create a page or redirect at /search while search is on.

What visitors see

• A search box in your navigation bar and on your blog page.
• A /search page with a search field and the results, ten per page. Each result shows a title, a short snippet with the matching words highlighted, and whether it is a Page or a Blog post.
• A friendly message when nothing matches. If someone searches too often in a short time, they are asked to wait a moment.

The /search page itself is kept out of search engines.

What is searched

• Your published pages, from the version that is currently live. Drafts and unpublished edits are never searchable.
• Your published blog posts. Posts that are still drafts are not searchable.

A new page, or a change to a page, becomes searchable after you publish your site. Blog posts are searchable as soon as you publish them. Search does not work while your site is unpublished or in maintenance mode.

Results must contain all the words searched for. Titles count more than headings, and headings more than body text. A search can have up to 100 characters and up to 6 words, and longer input is shortened.