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How are label names considered when searching?

Melissa Henderson

Since labels can only be one word, how does the use of no spaces, hyphens or underscores in labels affect what is returned in the search results?

For example, I have a page with the following labels: signon, sign_on, sign-on. I search for "sign on" (with or without quotes). Would this page show up in the search results since the labels don't exactly match what is being searched for?

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Davin Studer

Well, I tried it on my instance and it returned the page with and without quotes. Honestly, I was surprised that with quotes the page was returned because when you quote the terms it means you are looking for an exact search and none of those labels are exactly that. But it returned anyway.

On a side note. Typically, I think the best of use of labels should not be for search purposes but rather to group types of documents. If you want your users to find the documents then the terms should be in the content of the document itself. A good label would be something like "policy". So if you wanted you could find all of the documents in the system that are policies by using this search syntax (labelText:policy). You certainly can use it for keywords ... it will work. But, I think the best use is for categorizing.

Melissa Henderson

Hi Davin,

Could you tell me exactly what you tried? I'm not sure what you mean by "it". I appreciate you taking the time to help me.

Davin Studer

I created a page and gave it all three labels that you mentioned and then did a search both with quotes and without for sign on.

Melissa Henderson

Ok, I will do the same, but test with one label at a time since I am still not clear whether one version has more power over another.

Melissa Henderson

Based on my test, it looks like sign-on, sign_on, and sign (one label) on (another label) are treated the same when searching for the whole phrase, and in all instances my page was returned near the top in my search results. The label signon did not return my page in the first page of the search results.

J_zr7xva

Hi, Just wondering which search you guys are using? Are you using the specific labelText search? I am trying to get the labels to show in the Confluence search but has not been successful. Thanks.

Melissa Henderson

I am not. I entered Sign On into the global search box. Since I'm not using the labelText search, there are other things that influence page rank (https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF43/Ranking+of+Search+Results) that I had to consider as well.

Davin Studer

We have been referring to just regular searches. The regular search will look at labels too. The search term labelText is if you only want to search by label. If you want to search by labelText the syntax is ... labelText:mylabel