Search WordPress.com
We’ve heard this search thing is going to be big some day.
Google or Yahoo are great for finding general stuff on the web at large, but sometimes you want to find real posts from real people, and blogs are great for that. There are blog search engines, but when you search for “kittens” you’re as likely to see an offer to enlarge your mortgage while working at home.
WordPress.com is fast approaching 3 million blogs, with hundreds of thousands of posts and pages being created by our brilliant and attractive users every day. Tags and categories help group the content, but finding exactly what you are looking for can still be tricky. We also feel like you guys are creating some of the best stuff on the web, there’s a natural selection of people tasteful enough to end up on WordPress in the first place. 
That’s where our new search feature comes in.
Search results can be ordered by relevancy, our magic secret sauce algorithm that’s the default, or by most recent, so you can see the latest and greatest on any given subject. International communities are very important to us, so from day uno we have language-specific engines for every language we support. For example, Spanish search is at es.search.wordpress.com.
To assist in your exploration we analyze related tags based on your search terms, with the most popular related tag at the top.
For those who want to keep up to date with changes to the search results, just subscribe to the RSS feed of the results (at the bottom of the related tags section).
If you are like me, the first question you have is how long it will take for your new posts to show up in search results. I won’t keep you in suspense, the system is designed to have new posts in the index in under 30 minutes, often much faster. The search is powered by a new open source project called Hounder from a company we worked with called Flaptor.
Check out the new search here.
Apr 16th at 7:41 pm
Finally! It was about time!
Apr 16th at 8:52 pm
Nice work, guys.
Apr 16th at 8:55 pm
I’m really happy to see this.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Apr 16th at 10:46 pm
Fantastic! Thank you!
Apr 16th at 11:30 pm
Excellent!
A good way to find like minded WordPress bloggers and to enhance the WordPress community.
A quality enhancement and Thanks.
MadSilence
Apr 16th at 11:44 pm
Indeed very beneficial!
Apr 17th at 4:03 am
Its about time…
Iranian Ajax
Apr 17th at 12:51 pm
Long awaited!
Apr 17th at 1:25 pm
A step in the right direction- it could be very frustrating trying to find a wordpress blog through google. However, surely the search option can be refined a little more- the results so far seem rather nonsensical and not the most obvious.
Thanks.
Apr 17th at 1:37 pm
That´s an absolutly great feature, thanks a lot for implementing!
Apr 17th at 1:42 pm
That is great, just great. WordPress has been coming out with some amazing new stuff lately.
Apr 17th at 2:02 pm
Ahh…the one thing I have always wished for!
Apr 17th at 2:33 pm
This will be big hit and useful.
Keep it up guys.
Always finding ways to get appreciations.
Rana
Apr 17th at 3:24 pm
It is a long wished option for every wordpress.com bloggers. Thanx for that. Do you have any plan to add this feature on the top of every wordpress.com blog? I think it would be better if readers can use the search option from any blogs (not only from the http://www.wordpress.com or the tags).
By the way thanx for this features. Waiting to see more in future…
Apr 17th at 4:33 pm
Do you know that was one of the things I was looking for when I first started my blog a couple of weeks ago – Serious! I just thought I was missing it since I have alot to learn with blogging still. I would come on look around for it and give up, but NOW I see it….Thank you so much! I can stop “searching” for the Search!
Debbie
Apr 17th at 10:36 pm
Joseph + Team,
Thanx for your work! I follow in all respects m@q.
For possible optimizations, please, compares occasionally with http://www.phpdig.net/.
Apr 17th at 11:03 pm
This is really cool. However, I also am concerned about privacy. Will my posts still show up in search if my blog setting blocks search engines, but still allows normal visitors? I like to keep my blog as low-key as possible without resorting to password access.
Apr 17th at 11:04 pm
@ Cassandra -
Your posts will only show up in search results if your privacy setting is set to “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers”. Any other setting and your blog posts will not show in WordPress.com search results.
Apr 18th at 6:46 am
just wanna say thanks of it and wanna try it
Apr 18th at 1:24 pm
Thx Scott and Team.
It makes me easier to find any information that I need at WP
Apr 18th at 1:48 pm
i just picked up my phd so i should now be able to figure out wordpress search
Apr 19th at 1:45 pm
awesome.
Apr 19th at 1:50 pm
Damn sexy… I was making it do wit tags till now! This is too good.. What wordpress search has and google blogsearch doesn’t have is the display of exerpt from the blog!
Apr 19th at 4:25 pm
cool!
Apr 19th at 7:06 pm
its about time. although the extras, especially the rss, make it worth the wait.
Apr 19th at 7:16 pm
Seems to search only the text of posts. ? not post titles or other info. ?
Apr 19th at 7:17 pm
@dougrogers -
It does search other data besides the post, each with it’s own weight. The algorithm is not set in stone though, we are still tweaking it to try and get the best results possible.
Apr 19th at 9:27 pm
No, I’m wrong, it does seem to search titles. NOT A PLUG but if you search for ‘Basia Bulat’, you get a number of hits, but neither of mine. Search for ‘Basia Bulat London Ontario’, then you get mine. Curious. A little wrinkly? Or am I not understanding something?
Apr 19th at 11:48 pm
I was wondering if you could make it so that the search includes Blog Titles?
Theres sometimes that I dont have time to add a blog I like to my blogroll but cant find it again later to add it.
Thanks
Apr 20th at 1:43 pm
Thanks for the new feature, we are waiting the other new features. Thanks WordPress, thanks Joseph Scott. From Indonesian Blogger http://www.AyoBangkitIndonesiaku.Wordpress.com
Apr 20th at 4:54 pm
i am basically clueless about what this is all about but, I will take all of you word for it that it is an amazingly wonderful thing….so…..GOOD JOB word press guys! Now…WHERE’S MY BOOK DEAL???? LOL!
Apr 20th at 6:13 pm
Yay!!!! I’ve wondered when wordpress was going to get a search function!!!!
*goes off to play*
Apr 20th at 7:26 pm
I really like the idea of searching blogs.
Apr 20th at 10:36 pm
I think your search ROCKS. There are so many times where I’m searching for something that the technical community on WordPress invariably will have an answer for, but I never had a way to just search on it. Very nice feature – just blogged about it.
Apr 21st at 3:51 am
I was searching the search wordpress.com for long time; at last…….
Apr 21st at 9:50 am
Cool!
Apr 22nd at 3:12 pm
Thank you so much for this feature. It is very helpful. You guys at wordpress are great. Just keep all those exciting features coming:)
Apr 22nd at 6:27 pm
I’ve been wait’n a while for this. How can I filter the results. I want to search for “Photoshop” but exclude all the results that conatin CS2. With regular expressions, I would just search for “Photoshop ! CS2″. How can I do this on wordpress?
http://www.regular-expressions.info/
Apr 22nd at 7:13 pm
@erikcurtis -
To exclude terms from a search you put a minus in front of it. That’s pretty standard for search engines, both Google and Yahoo support that same syntax.
Apr 23rd at 3:52 pm
I’m really digging the new search option! Much better than trying to use the Blog Surfer to find likewise posts and bloggers. Great job, WordPress! And thanks again for putting me on the front page!
Apr 24th at 8:29 pm
Word press is great and lovely. It is a good way to express and share ideas with the people in the world.
AWELE EBIGWEI
Apr 25th at 8:39 pm
Grrreat!!!
Thanks for the ever increasing features. Do you guys ever sleep at all? Or do you do your code while sleeping? 
Awesome.
BTW, I am waiting for a feature to ‘hide’ a particular post from public search engine. It’s just not fair for people who want to search for the real thing but stuck to my rubbish instead.
Apr 26th at 3:18 pm
It’s COOL!
Apr 26th at 6:48 pm
CooL
Apr 26th at 8:00 pm
A really interesting new feature. Thanks.
Apr 26th at 8:44 pm
very good
thanks wordpress
Apr 27th at 11:42 am
Excellent.
Apr 27th at 12:12 pm
I love it…
There was a big, long, heated debate on it on the forums a while back. I remember being bashed by the forum-nazi, know-it-all — TimeThief (although she is helpful a lot of the time there) — for bringing up something that absolutely will NEVER, EVER be implemented.
Thanks for doing this…and in typical WordPress, intuitive fashion. It’s been a long time coming.
Apr 27th at 5:39 pm
It’s a great feature. I’d like you to update inner blog search though, since the one provided by WP.com isn’t very developed. I’ve turned to using Google to search my own blog, which sounds bizarre to say the least.
Apr 28th at 4:11 am
Being new on WP, or at least a ‘puter illiterate user, I didn’t know this feature was new. I’ve been trying it and it seems to be effective.
Apr 28th at 4:14 am
I’ve tried this and it does seem to draw more people to my site. I agree—It’s cool!
Carolyn C. Holland