Confluence Search behaviour

Kris Dewachter
Community Leader
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April 28, 2023

Hi,

I'm having some issues with the Confluence search behaviour. This occurs both in the general search and the "live search" widget.

I have a page structure with a number of knowledge base articles (pages). The page titles are constructed as follows:

Main page

  • ABC-1 - this is KB article 1
  • ABC-2 - This is another KB article
  • ....
  • ABC-101 - Some more knowledge on this page
  • ABC-102 - Even more wisdom
  • .....

When a person performs a search on ex. "ABC-1". (a lot of people know the codes by heart), it will suggest a lot of pages, except the correct one (ABC-1). It will suggest ABC-2, 102, 101, .....  but NOT ABC-1

In other cases, when the customer enters ex. ABC-101, then it will find the correct page and even display it on top of the search result.

Does anyone have an insight on the correct behaviour of the Confluence search? I presume that the "-" sign will be causing most of my issues.

Is there any way to reconfigure or tweak the search for better search results?

Best regards,

Kris

 

 

 

4 answers

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1 vote
Answer accepted
Kris Dewachter
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 3, 2023

After contacting Atlassian Support I found out that there is already a bug ticket registered for this behaviour. 

The issue seems to be caused by Lucene Tokenization, which blocks an exact text search when using some characters like hyphens.

In other words, "-" is treated as the special operator for negation. So, searching for "ABC -1" is the same as searching for "ABC NOT 1".

0 votes
Darshanaa _ServiceRocket_
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
March 4, 2024

Hi @Kris Dewachter ,

Have you tried Space Manager for Confluence?

The search function helps you locate the exact document within the space.

It also helps to give you a visual view of your entire space(s) so that you're able to clearly see your Confluence structure. 

I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the app. Please feel free to leave any questions/feedback here. 

Thanks & have a great day! :)

0 votes
Kris Dewachter
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 1, 2023

Hi @Mihai Schwarz ,

Thanks for your reply.

I tried adding the keys (ABC-1) as labels but that did not bring any improvement.

Also, manual re-indexing has been disabled on Cloud.

Best regards,

Kris

0 votes
Mihai Schwarz
Rising Star
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April 28, 2023

Hi @Kris Dewachter ,

Have you tried adding keywords from the title as labels or simply adding labels to refine the available searches?

Additionally I suggest you should trigger a content indexing (outside of working hours) if you have lots of pages.

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