Help:Searching

To search Pikipedia:
 * There should be a small search box at the left side of the screen with Go and Search buttons; just type what you're looking for into the search box and click Go to go straight to the page if one with the exact name exists, or Search to search the criteria in all articles.

The most important search tip is: don't search for only words in quotes. Try the search without quotes first. If that's not good enough, put as many words as possible outside the quotes or add some more to narrow the search.

External search
It is possible to search Pikipedia with external search engines.

Google:
 * Search Pikipedia with Google

If you frequently search via Google, consider installing the Google Toolbar. Using the "search this site" button allows you to quickly search a site.

Yahoo:
 * Search Pikipedia with Yahoo!

If you frequently search via Yahoo!, consider installing the [http://toolbar.yahoo.com Yahoo! Companion Toolbar]. Using the "Search Only the Current Site" button allows you to quickly search a site.

Important details
Searches can be limited using the following:
 * Normal searches will search for articles with any one of the words searched for.
 * Type "+" before each word to search for articles that contain all search terms.
 * To search for a specific phrase with the words in the order entered, enclose the words in quotes (").
 * To search for articles without a particlar word, append "-" to the start of that word in the search.

Common words such as "the", "one", "your", "who", "which", "such", "about" and "Pikmin" are ignored, as are short numbers.

For the first word of the search, capitalisation makes no difference to the results; for all proceeding words in the search, however, results are produced on a case-sensitive basis.

You can use some limited wildcards if you really want to. Look up "fulltext search" on http://www.mysql.com and look down under 'boolean search' for the details. However, wildcard searches are slower, so go easy on the poor server.

If a word appears in an article with single quotes, you can only find it if you search for the word with quotes.

The search only applies to the namespaces selected in the user's preferences. To change the namespaces you search, tick or untick boxes at the search results page or change your preferences. It is also possible to list redirects by checking the tickbox "List redirects" in the "Search in namespaces" box found at the bottom of a search results page.

The source text (what one sees in the edit box, also called wiki text) is searched, not the "face value" of the page.

For reasons of efficiency and priority, very recent changes are not always immediately taken into account in searches.

The search feature is not guaranteed to be reliable, and may return unexpected and unintelligent results.