[1] Title: Search Query Definition | Page One Power
[1] URL Source: https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query
[1] Description: Use the - symbol to remove a word from your search: marathon -oil. Use the “ ” symbol to search for an exact match: “brand-name shoe”. Use the .. dollar symbol to search within a range of numbers. · Include “OR” between each search query: marathon OR race.
[1] Markdown Content:
Search Query Definition | Page One Power
===============
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What is a query?
================
A search query refers to the words and phrases that people use in order to search for something through a search engine.
#### Table of Contents
[What Is a Search Query?](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionone)
[Search Queries vs. Keywords](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectiontwo)
[The Three Main Types of Queries](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionthree)
[Informational Searches](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionfour)
[Navigational Searches](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionfive)
[Transactional Searches](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionsix)
[The Buyer's Journey](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionseven)
[Refining Web Searches With Search Operators](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectioneight)
Table of Contents
[What Is a Search Query?](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionone)
[Search Queries vs. Keywords](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectiontwo)
[The Three Main Types of Queries](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionthree)
[Informational Searches](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionfour)
[Navigational Searches](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionfive)
[Transactional Searches](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionsix)
[The Buyer's Journey](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectionseven)
[Refining Web Searches With Search Operators](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/search-query#sectioneight)
What Is a Search Query?
-----------------------
A search query is a word or phrase that an internet user types into a search engine’s search box to answer an inquiry or question. A query consists of a series of words, a phrase, or full sentence — a “long-tail query.”
Queries are often viewed in terms of keywords. Although the terms “search query” and “keyword” are sometimes used interchangeably, these may be better understood as unique terms to help you focus on the underlying searcher intent.
It is common to set goals in attempts to “rank for more keywords” or to optimize a page for target keywords, but real SEO requires site owners to optimize their content to satisfy searcher intent. This is where thinking about queries can be helpful.
Search Queries vs. Keywords
---------------------------
[Keywords](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/seo-keywords) are extrapolated from search queries. They are the commonly used words when people are conducting searches with real-word terms and language. If you think only in terms of keywords, it is easy to stuff keywords into content and attain a high keyword density, without providing information of value. However, if you think in terms of satisfying a query, then the goal is no longer to simply mirror the language of searchers, but to give them the real information they are searching for.
For example, if you are preparing to purchase running shoes you might use the search query: “What are the best running shoes.” The term “running shoes” would be the primary keyword, but the long-tail search query “what are the best running shoes” gives specific context to the keyword. It more explicitly describes the searcher intent behind the search.
If you simply searched the keyword “running shoes,” the search engine might provide a variety of answers in the [search engine results page](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/what-is-serp) (SERP). Without context the SERP may include pages that address:
* Running shoes for women.
* Best running shoes.
* How many miles on running shoes?
* How long do running shoes last?
* How often to replace running shoes?
* How should running shoes fit?
The more diverse the SERP, the less clear the underlying searcher intent is to the search engine.
Performing [keyword research](https://www.pageonepower.com/keyword-research-services) for a website can help webmasters and businesses understand how their audience is searching for their products and services. This involves collecting data on the queries being used to give context to the keywords. Context can help make the intent behind the query clear — thus making it easier to create content that satisfies the searcher who is using the keywords or queries.
Understanding niches and keyword targets can help businesses pinpoint and address specific long-tail queries and pain points of their target audience. A successful business is able to help their audience by creating [keyword-focused content](https://www.pageonepower.com/keyword-focused-content) that provides a depth of discourse on relevant topics. By increasing the depth of focus and content surrounding a keyword, websites send signals to search engines that they are an authority on the topic.
Want to learn more?
Visit our blog to learn more about search and search engine optimization.
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SEO Keyword Research
--------------------
Read our comprehensive SEO keyword research guide to learn how you can get your web pages to show up higher in the SERPs.
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-------------------
Check out our ultimate link building guide to learn how to earn powerful backlinks to empower your web content in search.
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The Three Main Types of Queries
-------------------------------
In general, search queries can be categorized into three types: informational, navigational, and transactional.
Informational Searches
======================
Informational searches are queries that cover a broad topic such as “Marathons.” A query of this type results in an abundance of relevant results. An informational search is a user’s broad stroke of looking for general information about a topic.
In best SEO practice, blog content should exist all along the spectrum of the buyer’s journey, known as the marketing funnel. If you’re [creating linkable content](https://www.pageonepower.com/linkable-content) that is worthy of earning and [building backlinks](https://www.pageonepower.com/link-building-service), this content usually resides at the top of the funnel. The content of this type is informative, trustworthy, authoritative, and spans a wide range of audiences. It typically does not hold much transactional or promotional value or content.
Navigational Searches
=====================
A user usually conducts a navigational query or a “go query” to find a specific location — a particular website, webpage, or even physical location. A navigational query could be “youtube” rather than a user entering the YouTube URL into the navigation bar or using a bookmark.
Websites that are trying to target navigational queries should keep the user intent in mind, and focus their content creation efforts on targeting their own brand’s navigational terms and branded keywords.
However, it is important to note that some queries may appear to be navigational, but could actually be looking for information. For example, if a user queries “Zoom,” they could be looking for the actual Zoom website, or they could be looking to identify what Zoom is, how it’s used, information on the company, or news related to the use of Zoom meetings.
Transactional Searches
======================
A user typically conducts a transactional query to buy, order, or make a purchase. These types of queries may include brand names or specific product descriptions. This type of query would appear as “brand-name running shoe” or “order womens running shoes.”
In some cases, transactional queries are also vertical searches. A vertical search is a query that someone poses while looking to make a transaction in a specific industry. These typically occur in local searches such as, “Running shoe shop near me.”
The Buyer's Journey
-------------------
These types of queries are often related to the buyer’s journey, or the stages a consumer goes through from researching to making an informed purchase. The buyer’s journey can be represented in the [marketing funnel stages](https://www.pageonepower.com/search-glossary/marketing-funnel) of search and the related content that shows up in the SERP. The funnel is represented in three stages:
* **Top-Funnel** — Top-funnel content is largely informational. It begins with awareness or a general understanding of a topic. For example: “Marathons,” or even “Marathon Running.” The results of this search will provide a large array of content that discusses different aspects of running a marathon, defining what a marathon is, runners’ burnout, marathon runner’s diets and exercise, as well as marathon running tips.
* **Mid-Funnel** — Mid-funnel content is informational, but also more geared towards consideration. You may now know that to run a marathon there are a few things you need to prepare for, so your next search will be more focused on directing your research. For example: “What you need to run a marathon.” The results of this query may include lists of items you need such as running shoes, clothes, types of gear, a bib number, identification, etc.
* **Bottom-Funnel** — Bottom-funnel content is geared towards consideration, commercial investigation, and transaction. The bottom of the funnel content is usually a descriptive page of a product or service. The search query may resemble “Running shoes for women,” or “Best running shoes.” The results of this search should provide bottom-funnel content such as buyer’s guides, or conversion pages.
Refining Web Searches With Search Operators
===========================================
Google offers tips and symbols to [refine web searches](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en) and queries to make your search results more precise. Consider the following techniques:
* Use the @ symbol when searching for social media: @instagram.
* Use the dollar symbol when searching for a product and price.
* Use the # symbol to search hashtags: #pageonepower.
* Use the - symbol to remove a word from your search: marathon -oil.
* Use the “ ” symbol to search for an exact match: “brand-name shoe”.
* Use the .. dollar symbol to search within a range of numbers.
* Include “OR” between each search query: marathon OR race.
* Use “site:” in front of a site or domain to search that site or domain for specific content. Furthermore, use quotations to find the specific content on the site that you are looking for. For example: site:pageonepower.com "keyword content".
* Use “related:” in front of a web address to find related domains.
[](https://www.pageonepower.com/seo-integration-download)
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[2] Title: What is a Search Query? (Definition) - SEO Glossary
[2] URL Source: https://growhackscale.com/glossary/search-queries
[2] Description: For example, a user might use the search query “order new iPhone” to tell the search engine to bring up a list of websites where they can purchase a new iPhone. Due to the commercial nature of these searches, they are heavily targeted by e-commerce websites.
[2] Markdown Content:
A search query is a phrase or a keyword combination users enter in search engines to find things of interest.
Difference Between Keywords and Search Queries
----------------------------------------------
A [keyword](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/target-keyword) refers to a word or group of words that are usually associated with particular content or topic. An example of a keyword would be “united states president”.
On the other hand, a search query refers to the real-life combination of words that people enter in search engines to find a particular content or information.
In this screenshot below, you can see some examples of search queries that people are using to find the “united states president”.
Types of Search Queries
-----------------------
People perform searches with [different intentions](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/search-intent). These intentions can be categorised into three different types: informational, navigational, and transactional.
### 1\. Informational Searches Queries
As the name implies, informational search queries refer to searches where users are looking for information - this could be anything.
People who perform these searches are usually not looking for anything other than answers to their questions or guides on how to do something.
An example of this query would be a user searching for “how to bake bread”.
Question-like queries dominate this type of search.
### 2\. Navigational Searches Queries
People who perform navigational searches are usually looking to find a particular web page related to a specific brand or product.
This could be a website, social media account, or a [blog post](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/blog-post) related to that particular brand or product.
For example, a user looking for our LinkedIn account could use the search query “grow hack scale linkedin” to find it.
Using this method, they’ve used the search engine as a navigational tool hence the name navigational search query.
### 3\. Transactional Searches Queries
Transactional search queries refer to searches where users are looking to perform a transaction - usually with the intention of making a purchase.
These queries often include keywords like “order”, “buy” or “purchase”.
Sometimes, they will also include the specific brands or products they want to transact with or buy.
For example, a user might use the search query “order new iPhone” to tell the search engine to bring up a list of websites where they can purchase a new iPhone.
Due to the commercial nature of these searches, they are heavily targeted by [e-commerce websites](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/ecommerce).
### How Can We Help?
Wanting to improve your chances in [SERPs](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/serp) and have no idea where to start? You should check out [our SEO training courses](https://growhackscale.com/academy) where you can find lessons to walk you through practises we use in our own business!
If you want to take it a step further - you could book a call with us for a free strategy session. We could help clarify the steps you need to take in order to get ahead of the competition with a personalised plan.
[3] Title: Keyword queries and search conditions for eDiscovery
[3] URL Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions
[3] Description: Keep the following in mind when using search conditions. A condition is logically connected to the keyword query (specified in the keyword box) by the AND operator. That means that items have to satisfy both the keyword query and the condition to be included in the results.
[3] Markdown Content:
[Skip to main content](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#main)
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Keyword queries and search conditions for eDiscovery
----------------------------------------------------
* Article
* 11/28/2023
In this article
---------------
1. [Search tips and tricks](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#search-tips-and-tricks)
2. [Finding content in Exchange Online](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#finding-content-in-exchange-online)
3. [Searchable email properties](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searchable-email-properties)
4. [Finding content in SharePoint and OneDrive](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#finding-content-in-sharepoint-and-onedrive)
5. [Searchable site properties](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searchable-site-properties)
6. [Searchable contact properties](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searchable-contact-properties)
7. [Search operators](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#search-operators)
8. [Search conditions](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#search-conditions)
9. [Special characters](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#special-characters)
10. [Searchable sensitive data types](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searchable-sensitive-data-types)
11. [Searching for site content shared with external users](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searching-for-site-content-shared-with-external-users)
12. [Searching for site content shared within your organization](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searching-for-site-content-shared-within-your-organization)
13. [Searching for Skype for Business conversations](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searching-for-skype-for-business-conversations)
14. [Character limits for searches](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#character-limits-for-searches)
This article describes the properties available to help find content across email and chat in Exchange Online and documents and files stored on SharePoint and OneDrive for Business using the eDiscovery search tools in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.
This includes Content search, Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Standard), and Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium) (eDiscovery searches in eDiscovery (Premium) are called _collections_). You can also use the **\*-ComplianceSearch** cmdlets in [Security & Compliance PowerShell](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/exchange/scc-powershell) to search for these properties.
This article also describes:
* Using Boolean search operators, search conditions, and other search query techniques to refine your search results.
* Searching for communications of various types related to specific employees and projects during a specific time frame.
* Searching for site content that is related to a specific project, employees and/or subjects during a specific time period.
For step-by-step instructions on how to create different eDiscovery searches, see:
* [Content search](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-content-search)
* [Search for content in eDiscovery (Standard)](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-search-for-content)
* [Create a collection estimate in eDiscovery (Premium)](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-create-draft-collection)
Note
eDiscovery searches in the compliance portal and the corresponding **\*-ComplianceSearch** cmdlets in Security & Compliance PowerShell use the Keyword Query Language (KQL). For more detailed information, see [Keyword Query Language syntax reference](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/general-development/keyword-query-language-kql-syntax-reference).
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#search-tips-and-tricks)
Search tips and tricks
----------------------
* The time zone for all searches is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Changing time zones for your organization isn't currently supported. Time zone display settings in the search view are only for applicable for values in _Data_ column and don't affect time stamps on collected items.
* Keyword searches aren't case-sensitive. For example, **cat** and **CAT** return the same results.
* The Boolean operators **AND**, **OR**, **NOT**, and **NEAR** must be uppercase.
* Using quotes stops wild cards and any operations inside the quotes.
* A space between two keywords or two `property:value` expressions is the same as using **OR**. For example, `from:"Sara Davis" subject:reorganization` returns all messages sent by Sara Davis or messages that contain the word reorganization in the subject line. However, using a mix of spaces and **OR** conditionals in a single query may lead to unexpected results. We recommend using either spaces or **OR** in a single query.
* Use syntax that matches the `property:value` format. Values aren't case-sensitive, and they can't have a space after the operator. If there's a space, your intended value is a full-text search. For example `to: pilarp` searches for "pilarp" as a keyword, rather than for messages sent to pilarp.
* When searching a recipient property, such as To, From, Cc, or Recipients, you can use an SMTP address, alias, or display name to denote a recipient. For example, you can use pilarp@contoso.com, pilarp, or "Pilar Pinilla."
* You can use only prefix searches; for example, **cat\*** or **set\***. Suffix searches (**\*cat**), infix searches (**c\*t**), and substring searches (**\*cat\***) aren't supported.
* When searching a property, use double quotation marks (" ") if the search value consists of multiple words. For example, `subject:budget Q1` returns messages that contain **budget** in the subject line and that contain **Q1** anywhere in the message or in any of the message properties. Using `subject:"budget Q1"` returns all messages that contain **budget Q1** anywhere in the subject line.
* To exclude content marked with a certain property value from your search results, place a minus sign (-) before the name of the property. For example, `-from:"Sara Davis"` excludes any messages sent by Sara Davis.
* You can export items based on message type. For example, to export Skype conversations and chats in Microsoft Teams, use the syntax `kind:im`. To return only email messages, you would use `kind:email`. To return chats, meetings, and calls in Microsoft Teams, use `kind:microsoftteams`.
* When searching sites, you have to add the trailing `/` to the end of the URL when using the `path` property to return only items in a specified site. If you don't include the trailing `/`, items from a site with a similar path name are also returned. For example, if you use `path:sites/HelloWorld` then items from sites named `sites/HelloWorld_East` or `sites/HelloWorld_West` would also be returned. To return items only from the HelloWorld site, you have to use `path:sites/HelloWorld/`.
* The **Query language-country/region** must be defined in your search query prior to collecting content.
* When searching the **Sent** folders for emails, using the SMTP address for the sender isn't supported. Items in the **Sent** folder contain only display names.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#finding-content-in-exchange-online)
Finding content in Exchange Online
----------------------------------
Admins are often charged with finding out who knew what when in the most efficient and effective way possible to respond to requests concerning ongoing or potential litigation, internal investigations, and other scenarios. These requests are often urgent, involve multiple stakeholder teams, and have significant impact if not completed in a timely manner. Knowing how to find the right information is critical for admins to complete searches successfully and help their organizations to manage the risk and cost associated with eDiscovery requirements.
When an eDiscovery request is submitted, often there's only partial information available for the admin to start to collect content that may be related to a particular investigation. The request may include employee names, project titles, rough date ranges when the project was active, and not much more. From this information, the admin needs to create queries to find relevant content across Microsoft 365 services to determine the information needed for a particular project or subject. Understanding how information is stored and managed for these services help admins more efficiently find what they need quickly and in an effective manner.
Email, chat, meeting, and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 activity data (user prompts and Copilot responses) are all stored in Exchange Online. Many communication properties are available for searching items included in Exchange Online. Some properties such as _From_, _Sent_, _Subject_, and _To_ are unique to certain items and aren't relevant when searching for files or documents in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. Including these types of properties when searching across workloads can sometimes lead to unexpected results.
For example, to find content related to specific employees (_User 1_ and _User 2_), associated with a project called _Tradewinds_, and during January 2020 through January 2022, you might use a query with the following properties:
* Add User 1 and User 2's Exchange Online locations as data sources to the case
* Select User 1 and User 2's Exchange Online locations as collection locations
* For **Keyword**, use _Tradewinds_
* For **Date Range**, use the _January 1, 2020_ to _January 31, 2022_ range
Important
For emails, when a keyword is used, we search subject, body and many properties related to the participants. However, due to recipient expansion, search may not return expected results when using the alias or part of the alias. Therefore we recommend using the full UPN.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searchable-email-properties)
Searchable email properties
---------------------------
The following table lists the email message properties that can be searched by using the eDiscovery search tools in the compliance portal or by using the **New-ComplianceSearch** or the **Set-ComplianceSearch** cmdlet.
Important
While email messages may have other properties supported in other Microsoft 365 services, only the email properties listed in this table are supported in eDiscovery search tools. Attempting to include other email messages properties in searches isn't supported.
The table includes an example of the _property:value_ syntax for each property and a description of the search results returned by the examples. You can enter these `property:value` pairs in the keywords box for an eDiscovery search.
Note
When searching email properties, it's not possible to search for message headers. Header information is not indexed for collections. Additionally, items in which the specified property is empty or blank are not searchable. For example, using the _property:value_ pair of **subject:""** to search for email messages with an empty subject line will return zero results. This also applies when searching site and contact properties.
| **Property** | **Property description** | **Examples** | **Search results returned by the examples** |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| AttachmentNames | The names of files attached to an email message. | `attachmentnames:annualreport.ppt``attachmentnames:annual*`
| Messages that have an attached file named _annualreport.ppt_. In the second example, using the wildcard character ( \* ) returns messages with the word _annual_ in the file name of an attachment.1 |
| Bcc | The Bcc field of an email message.1 | `bcc:pilarp@contoso.com``bcc:pilarp`
`bcc:"Pilar Pinilla"`
| All examples return messages with _Pilar Pinilla_ included in the Bcc field.
([See Recipient Expansion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)) |
| Category | The categories to search. Categories can be defined by users by using Outlook or Outlook on the web (formerly known as Outlook Web App). The possible values are:
* blue
* green
* orange
* purple
* red
* yellow
| `category:"Red Category"` | Messages that have been assigned the _red_ category in the source mailboxes. |
| Cc | The Cc field of an email message.1 | `cc:pilarp@contoso.com``cc:"Pilar Pinilla"`
| In both examples, messages with _Pilar Pinilla_ specified in the Cc field.
([See Recipient Expansion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)) |
| Folderid | The folder ID (GUID) of a specific mailbox folder in 48-character format. If you use this property, be sure to search the mailbox that the specified folder is located in. Only the specified folder is searched. Any subfolders in the folder won't be searched. To search subfolders, you need to use the _Folderid_ property for the subfolder you want to search.For more information about searching for the _Folderid_ property and using a script to obtain the folder IDs for a specific mailbox, see [Use Content search for targeted collections](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-use-content-search-for-targeted-collections).
| `folderid:4D6DD7F943C29041A65787E30F02AD1F00000000013A0000``folderid:2370FB455F82FC44BE31397F47B632A70000000001160000 AND participants:garthf@contoso.com`
| The first example returns all items in the specified mailbox folder. The second example returns all items in the specified mailbox folder that were sent or received by _garthf@contoso.com_. |
| From | The sender of an email message.1 | `from:pilarp@contoso.com` | Messages sent by the specified user.
([See Recipient Expansion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)) |
| HasAttachment | Indicates whether a message has an attachment. Use the values **true** or **false**. | `from:pilar@contoso.com AND hasattachment:true` | Messages sent by the specified user that have attachments. |
| Importance | The importance of an email message, which a sender can specify when sending a message. By default, messages are sent with normal importance, unless the sender sets the importance as **high** or **low**. | `importance:high``importance:medium`
`importance:low`
| Messages that are marked as high importance, medium importance, or low importance. |
| IsRead | Indicates whether messages have been read. Use the values **true** or **false**. | `isread:true``isread:false`
| The first example returns messages with the IsRead property set to **True**. The second example returns messages with the IsRead property set to **False**. |
| ItemClass | Use this property to search specific third-party data types that your organization imported to Office 365. Use the following syntax for this property: `itemclass:ipm.externaldata.*` | `itemclass:ipm.externaldata.Facebook* AND subject:contoso``itemclass:ipm.externaldata.Twitter* AND from:"Ann Beebe" AND "Northwind Traders"`
| The first example returns Facebook items that contain the word "contoso" in the Subject property. The second example returns Twitter items that were posted by Ann Beebe and that contain the keyword phrase "Northwind Traders".For a complete list of values to use for third-party data types for the ItemClass property, see [Use Content search to search third-party data that was imported to Office 365](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/use-content-search-to-search-third-party-data-that-was-imported).
|
| Kind | The type of email message to search for. Possible values:contacts
docs
email
externaldata
faxes
im
journals
meetings
microsoftteams (returns items from chats, meetings, and calls in Microsoft Teams)
notes
posts
rssfeeds
tasks
voicemail
| `kind:email``kind:email OR kind:im OR kind:voicemail`
`kind:externaldata`
| The first example returns email messages that meet the search criteria. The second example returns email messages, instant messaging conversations (including Skype for Business conversations and chats in Microsoft Teams), and voice messages that meet the search criteria. The third example returns items that were imported to mailboxes in Microsoft 365 from third-party data sources, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Cisco Jabber that meet the search criteria. For more information, see [Archiving third-party data in Office 365](https://www.microsoft.com/?ref=go). |
| Participants | All the people fields in an email message. These fields are From, To, Cc, and Bcc.1 | `participants:garthf@contoso.com``participants:contoso.com`
| Messages sent by or sent to garthf@contoso.com. The second example returns all messages sent by or sent to a user in the contoso.com domain.
([See Recipient Expansion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)) |
| Received | The date that an email message was received by a recipient. | `received:2021-04-15``received>=2021-01-01 AND received<=2021-03-31`
| Messages that were received on April 15, 2021. The second example returns all messages received between January 1, 2021 and March 31, 2021. |
| Recipients | All recipient fields in an email message. These fields are To, Cc, and Bcc.1 | `recipients:garthf@contoso.com``recipients:contoso.com`
| Messages sent to garthf@contoso.com. The second example returns messages sent to any recipient in the contoso.com domain.
([See Recipient Expansion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)) |
| Sent | The date that an email message was sent by the sender. | `sent:2021-07-01``sent>=2021-06-01 AND sent<=2021-07-01`
| Messages that were sent on the specified date or sent within the specified date range. |
| Size | The size of an item, in bytes. | `size>26214400``size:1..1048567`
| Messages larger than 25 MB. The second example returns messages from 1 through 1,048,567 bytes (1 MB) in size. |
| Subject | The text in the subject line of an email message.**Note:** When you use the Subject property in a query, the search returns all messages in which the subject line contains the text you're searching for. In other words, the query doesn't return only those messages that have an exact match. For example, if you search for `subject:"Quarterly Financials"`, your results include messages with the subject "Quarterly Financials 2018".
| `subject:"Quarterly Financials"``subject:northwind`
| Messages that contain the phrase "Quarterly Financials" anywhere in the text of the subject line. The second example returns all messages that contain the word northwind in the subject line. |
| To | The To field of an email message.1 | `to:annb@contoso.com``to:annb `
`to:"Ann Beebe"`
| All examples return messages where Ann Beebe is specified in the To: line. |
Note
1 For the value of a recipient property, you can use email address (also called _user principal name_ or UPN), display name, or alias to specify a user. For example, you can use annb@contoso.com, annb, or "Ann Beebe" to specify the user Ann Beebe.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)
### Recipient expansion
When searching any of the recipient properties (From, To, Cc, Bcc, Participants, and Recipients), Microsoft 365 attempts to expand the identity of each user by looking them up in Microsoft Entra ID. If the user is found in Microsoft Entra ID, the query is expanded to include the user's email address (or UPN), alias, display name, and LegacyExchangeDN. For example, a query such as `participants:ronnie@contoso.com` expands to `participants:ronnie@contoso.com OR participants:ronnie OR participants:"Ronald Nelson" OR participants:""`.
To prevent recipient expansion, add a wild card character (asterisk) to the end of the email address and use a reduced domain name; for example, `participants:"ronnie@contoso*"` Be sure to surround the email address with double quotation marks.
However, be aware that preventing recipient expansion in the search query may result in relevant items not being returned in the search results. Email messages in Exchange can be saved with different text formats in the recipient fields. Recipient expansion is intended to help mitigate this fact by returning messages that may contain different text formats. So preventing recipient expansion may result in the search query not returning all items that may be relevant to your investigation.
Note
If you need to review or reduce the items returned by a search query due to recipient expansion, consider using eDiscovery (Premium). You can search for messages (taking advantage of recipient expansion), add them to a review set, and then use review set queries or filters to review or narrow the results. For more information, see [Collect data for a case](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-collections) and [Query the data in a review set](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-review-set-search).
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#finding-content-in-sharepoint-and-onedrive)
Finding content in SharePoint and OneDrive
------------------------------------------
When searching for documents and files located in SharePoint or OneDrive for Business, it may make sense to adjust the query approach based on the metadata for the documents and files of interest. Files and documents have relevant properties like _Author_, _Created_, _CreatedBy_, _FileName_, _LastModifiedTime_, and _Title_. Most of these proprieties aren't relevant when searching for communications content in Exchange Online, and using these properties may lead to unexpected results if used across both documents and communications. Additionally, _FileName_ and _Title_ of a document may not be the same and using one or the other to try to find a file with specific content may lead to different or inaccurate results. Keep these properties in mind when searching for specific document and file content in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business.
For example, to find content related to documents created by User 1, for a project called _Tradewinds_, for specific files named _Financials_, and from January 2020 to January 2022, you might use a query with the following properties:
* Add User 1's OneDrive for Business site as a data sources to the case
* Select User 1's OneDrive for Business site as a collection location
* Add additional SharePoint site locations related to the project as collection locations
* For **FileName**, use _Financials_
* For **Keyword**, use _Tradewinds_
* For **Date Range**, use the _January 1, 2020_ to _January 31, 2022_ range
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searchable-site-properties)
Searchable site properties
--------------------------
The following table lists the SharePoint and OneDrive for Business properties that can be searched by using the eDiscovery search tools in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal or by using the **New-ComplianceSearch** or the **Set-ComplianceSearch** cmdlet.
Important
While documents and files stored on SharePoint and OneDrive for Business may have other properties supported in other Microsoft 365 services, only the document and file properties listed in this table are supported in eDiscovery search tools. Attempting to include other document or file properties in searches isn't supported.
The table includes an example of the _property:value_ syntax for each property and a description of the search results returned by the examples.
| Property | Property description | Example | Search results returned by the examples |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Author | The author field from Office documents, which persists if a document is copied. For example, if a user creates a document and the emails it to someone else who then uploads it to SharePoint, the document will still retain the original author. Be sure to use the user's display name for this property. | `author:"Garth Fort"` | All documents that are authored by Garth Fort. |
| ContentType | The SharePoint content type of an item, such as Item, Document, or Video. | `contenttype:document` | All documents would be returned. |
| Created | The date that an item is created. | `created>=2021-06-01` | All items created on or after June 1, 2021. |
| CreatedBy | The person that created or uploaded an item. Be sure to use the user's display name for this property. | `createdby:"Garth Fort"` | All items created or uploaded by Garth Fort. |
| DetectedLanguage | The language of an item. | `detectedlanguage:english` | All items in English. |
| DocumentLink | The path (URL) of a specific folder on a SharePoint or OneDrive for Business site. If you use this property, be sure to search the site that the specified folder is located in. We recommend using this property instead of the _Site_ and _Path_ properties.To return items located in subfolders of the folder that you specify for the documentlink property, you have to add /\* to the URL of the specified folder; for example, `documentlink: "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/Shared Documents/*"`
For more information about searching for the documentlink property and using a script to obtain the documentlink URLs for folders on a specific site, see [Use Content search for targeted collections](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-use-content-search-for-targeted-collections).
| `documentlink:"https://contoso-my.sharepoint.com/personal/garthf_contoso_com/Documents/Private"``documentlink:"https://contoso-my.sharepoint.com/personal/garthf_contoso_com/Documents/Shared with Everyone/*" AND filename:confidential`
| The first example returns all items in the specified OneDrive for Business folder. The second example returns documents in the specified site folder (and all subfolders) that contain the word "confidential" in the file name. |
| FileExtension | The extension of a file; for example, docx, one, pptx, or xlsx. | `fileextension:xlsx` | All Excel files (Excel 2007 and later) |
| FileName | The name of a file. | `filename:"marketing plan"``filename:estimate`
| The first example returns files with the exact phrase "marketing plan" in the title. The second example returns files with the word "estimate" in the file name. |
| LastModifiedTime | The date that an item was last changed. | `lastmodifiedtime>=2021-05-01``lastmodifiedtime>=2021-05-01 AND lastmodifiedtime<=2021-06-01`
| The first example returns items that were changed on or after May 1, 2021. The second example returns items changed between May 1, 2021 and June 1, 2021. |
| ModifiedBy | The person who last changed an item. Be sure to use the user's display name for this property. | `modifiedby:"Garth Fort"` | All items that were last changed by Garth Fort. |
| SharedWithUsersOWSUser | Documents that have been shared with the specified user and displayed on the **Shared with me** page in the user's OneDrive for Business site. These are documents that have been explicitly shared with the specified user by other people in your organization. When you export documents that match a search query that uses the SharedWithUsersOWSUser property, the documents are exported from the original content location of the person who shared the document with the specified user. For more information, see [Searching for site content shared within your organization](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searching-for-site-content-shared-within-your-organization). | `sharedwithusersowsuser:garthf``sharedwithusersowsuser:"garthf@contoso.com"`
| Both examples return all internal documents that have been explicitly shared with Garth Fort and that appear on the **Shared with me** page in Garth Fort's OneDrive for Business account. |
| Size | The size of an item, in bytes. | `size>=1``size:1..10000`
| The first example returns items larger than 1 byte. The second example returns items from 1 through 10,000 bytes in size. |
| Title | The title of the document. The Title property is metadata that's specified in Microsoft Office documents. It's different from the file name of the document. | `title:"communication plan"` | Any document that contains the phrase "communication plan" in the Title metadata property of an Office document. |
The following table lists the contact properties that are indexed and that you can search for using eDiscovery search tools. These are the properties that are available for users to configure for the contacts (also called personal contacts) that are located in the personal address book of a user's mailbox. To search for contacts, you can select the mailboxes to search and then use one or more contact properties in the keyword query.
Tip
To search for values that contain spaces or special characters, use double quotation marks (" ") to contain the phrase; for example, `businessaddress:"123 Main Street"`.
| Property | Property description |
| --- | --- |
| BusinessAddress | The address in the **Business Address** property. The property is also called the **Work** address on the contact properties page. |
| BusinessPhone | The phone number in any of the **Business Phone** number properties. |
| CompanyName | The name in the **Company** property. |
| Department | The name in the **Department** property. |
| DisplayName | The display name of the contact. This is the name in the **Full Name** property of the contact. |
| EmailAddress | The address for any email address property for the contact. Users can add multiple email addresses for a contact. Using this property would return contacts that match any of the contact's email addresses. |
| FileAs | The **File as** property. This property is used to specify how the contact is listed in the user's contact list. For example, a contact could be listed as _FirstName,LastName_ or _LastName,FirstName_. |
| GivenName | The name in the **First Name** property. |
| HomeAddress | The address in any of the **Home** address properties. |
| HomePhone | The phone number in any of the **Home** phone number properties. |
| IMAddress | The IM address property, which is typically an email address used for instant messaging. |
| MiddleName | The name in the **Middle** name property. |
| MobilePhone | The phone number in the **Mobile** phone number property. |
| Nickname | The name in the **Nickname** property. |
| OfficeLocation | The value in **Office** or **Office location** property. |
| OtherAddress | The value for the **Other** address property. |
| Surname | The name in the **Last** name property. |
| Title | The title in the **Job title** property. |
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#search-operators)
Search operators
----------------
Boolean search operators, such as **AND**, **OR**, and **NOT**, help you define more-precise searches by including or excluding specific words in the search query. Other techniques, such as using property operators (such as `>=` or `..`), quotation marks, parentheses, and wildcards, help you refine a search query. The following table lists the operators that you can use to narrow or broaden search results.
| Operator | Usage | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| AND | keyword1 AND keyword2 | Returns items that include all of the specified keywords or `property:value` expressions. For example, `from:"Ann Beebe" AND subject:northwind` would return all messages sent by Ann Beebe that contained the word northwind in the subject line. 2 |
| + | keyword1 + keyword2 + keyword3 | Returns items that contain _either_ `keyword2` or `keyword3` _and_ that also contain `keyword1`. Therefore, this example is equivalent to the query `(keyword2 OR keyword3) AND keyword1`.The query `keyword1 + keyword2` (with a space after the **+** symbol) isn't the same as using the **AND** operator. This query would be equivalent to `"keyword1 + keyword2"` and return items with the exact phase `"keyword1 + keyword2"`.
|
| OR | keyword1 OR keyword2 | Returns items that include one or more of the specified keywords or `property:value` expressions. 2 |
| NOT | keyword1 NOT keyword2NOT from:"Ann Beebe"
NOT kind:im
| Excludes items specified by a keyword or a `property:value` expression. In the second example excludes messages sent by Ann Beebe. The third example excludes any instant messaging conversations, such as Skype for Business conversations that are saved to the Conversation History mailbox folder. 2 |
| NEAR | keyword1 NEAR(n) keyword2 | Returns items with words that are near each other. In the _keyword1 NEAR(n) keyword2_ syntax, _n_ equals the number of words inclusive of _keyword1_ and _keyword2_. For example, to identify instances where the term _best_ is within 3 words of _worst_ (example sentence, 'Best is opposite of worst.'), you would use **best NEAR(5) worst**. This returns any items where there are 3 or fewer words between _best_ (keyword1) and _worst_ (keyword2). Specifying _5_ in the syntax example includes the 2 keywords and the difference of 3 words between them is the NEAR span. If no number is specified, the default _n_ value is 8. 2 |
| : | property:value | The colon (:) in the `property:value` syntax specifies that the value of the property being searched for contains the specified value. For example, `recipients:garthf@contoso.com` returns any message sent to garthf@contoso.com. |
| \= | property=value | The same as the `:` operator. |
| < | property | property>value | Denotes that the property being searched is greater than the specified value.1 |
| <= | property<=value | Denotes that the property being searched is less than or equal to a specific value.1 |
| \>= | property>=value | Denotes that the property being searched is greater than or equal to a specific value.1 |
| .. | property:value1..value2 | Denotes that the property being searched is greater than or equal to value1 and less than or equal to value2.1 |
| " " | "fair value"subject:"Quarterly Financials"
| In a keyword query (where you type the `property:value` pair in the **Keyword** box), use double quotation marks (" ") to search for an exact phrase or term. However, if you use the **Subject** or **Subject/Title** [search condition](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#search-conditions) condition, don't add double quotation marks to the value because quotation marks are automatically added when using these search conditions. If you do add quotation marks to the value, two pairs of double quotations will be added to the condition value, and the search query will return an error. |
| \* | cat\*subject:set\*
| Prefix searches (also called _prefix matching_) where a wildcard character ( \* ) is placed at the end of a word in keywords or `property:value` queries. In prefix searches, the search returns results with terms that contain the word followed by zero or more characters. For example, `title:set*` returns documents that contain the word "set", "setup", and "setting" (and other words that start with "set") in the document title.**Note:** You can use only prefix searches; for example, **cat\*** or **set\***. Suffix searches (**\*cat**), infix searches (**c\*t**), and substring searches (**\*cat\***) aren't supported.
Also, adding a period ( . ) to a prefix search changes the results that are returned. That's because a period is treated as a stop word. For example, searching for **cat\*** and searching for **cat.\*** will return different results. We recommend not using a period in a prefix search.
|
| ( ) | (fair OR free) AND (from:contoso.com)(IPO OR initial) AND (stock OR shares)
(quarterly financials)
| Parentheses group together Boolean phrases, `property:value` items, and keywords. For example, `(quarterly financials)` returns items that contain the words quarterly and financials. |
Note
1 Use this operator for properties that have date or numeric values.
2 Boolean search operators must be uppercase; for example, **AND**. If you use a lowercase operator, such as **and**, it will be treated as a keyword in the search query.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#search-conditions)
Search conditions
-----------------
You can add conditions to a search query to narrow a search and return a more refined set of results. Each condition adds a clause to the KQL search query that is created and run when you start the search.
* [Conditions for common properties](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#conditions-for-common-properties)
* [Conditions for mail properties](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#conditions-for-mail-properties)
* [Conditions for document properties](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#conditions-for-document-properties)
* [Operators used with conditions](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#operators-used-with-conditions)
* [Guidelines for using conditions](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#guidelines-for-using-conditions)
* [Examples of using conditions in search queries](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#examples-of-using-conditions-in-search-queries)
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#conditions-for-common-properties)
### Conditions for common properties
Create a condition using common properties when searching mailboxes and sites in the same search. The following table lists the available properties to use when adding a condition.
| Condition | Description |
| --- | --- |
| Date | For email, the date a message was created or imported from a PST file. For documents, the date a document was last modified.If you're searching for email messages for a specific time period, you should use the message _Received_ and _Sent_ conditions if you're unsure if the email messages may have been imported instead of natively created in Exchange.
|
| Sender/Author | For email, the person who sent a message. For documents, the person cited in the author field from Office documents. You can type more than one name, separated by commas. Two or more values are logically connected by the **OR** operator.
([See Recipient Expansion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)) |
| Size (in bytes) | For both email and documents, the size of the item (in bytes). |
| Subject/Title | For email, the text in the subject line of a message. For documents, the title of the document. As previously explained, the Title property is metadata specified in Microsoft Office documents. You can type the name of more than one subject/title values, separated by commas. Two or more values are logically connected by the **OR** operator.**Note**: Don't include double quotation marks to the values for this condition because quotation marks are automatically added when using this search condition. If you add quotation marks to the value, two pairs of double quotations will be added to the condition value, and the search query will return an error.
|
| Retention label | For both email and documents, retention labels that can be automatically or manually applied to messages and documents. Retention labels can be used to declare records and help you manage the data lifecycle of content by enforcing retention and deletion rules specified by the label. You can type part of the retention label name and use a wildcard or type the complete label name. For more information about retention labels, see [Learn about retention policies and retention labels](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/retention). |
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#conditions-for-mail-properties)
### Conditions for mail properties
Create a condition using mail properties when searching mailboxes or public folders in Exchange Online. The following table lists the email properties that you can use for a condition. These properties are a subset of the email properties that were previously described. These descriptions are repeated for your convenience.
| Condition | Description |
| --- | --- |
| Message kind | The message type to search. This is the same property as the Kind email property. Possible values:
* contacts
* docs
* email
* externaldata
* fax
* im
* journals
* meetings
* microsoftteams
* notes
* posts
* rssfeeds
* tasks
* voicemail
|
| Participants | All the people fields in an email message. These fields are From, To, Cc, and Bcc. ([See Recipient Expansion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)) |
| Type | The message class property for an email item. This is the same property as the ItemClass email property. It's also a multi-value condition. So to select multiple message classes, hold the **CTRL** key and then select two or more message classes in the drop-down list that you want to add to the condition. Each message class that you select in the list will be logically connected by the **OR** operator in the corresponding search query.For a list of the message classes (and their corresponding message class ID) that are used by Exchange and that you can select in the **Message class** list, see [Item Types and Message Classes](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/outlook/Concepts/Forms/item-types-and-message-classes).
|
| Received | The date that an email message was received by a recipient. This is the same property as the Received email property. |
| Recipients | All recipient fields in an email message. These fields are To, Cc, and Bcc. ([See Recipient Expansion](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#recipient-expansion)) |
| Sender | The sender of an email message. |
| Sent | The date that an email message was sent by the sender. This is the same property as the Sent email property. |
| Subject | The text in the subject line of an email message.**Note**: Don't include double quotation marks to the values for this condition because quotation marks are automatically added when using this search condition. If you add quotation marks to the value, two pairs of double quotations will be added to the condition value, and the search query will return an error.
|
| To | The recipient of an email message in the To field. |
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#conditions-for-document-properties)
### Conditions for document properties
Create a condition using document properties when searching for documents on SharePoint and OneDrive for Business sites. The following table lists the document properties that you can use for a condition. These properties are a subset of the site properties that were previously described. These descriptions are repeated for your convenience.
| Condition | Description |
| --- | --- |
| Author | The author field from Office documents, which persists if a document is copied. For example, if a user creates a document and the emails it to someone else who then uploads it to SharePoint, the document will still retain the original author. |
| Title | The title of the document. The Title property is metadata that's specified in Office documents. It's different than the file name of the document. |
| Created | The date that a document is created. |
| Last modified | The date that a document was last changed. |
| File type | The extension of a file; for example, docx, one, pptx, or xlsx. This is the same property as the FileExtension site property.**Note:** If you include a File type condition using the **Equals** or **Equals any of** operator in a search query, you can't use a prefix search (by including the wildcard character ( \* ) at the end of the file type) to return all versions of a file type. If you do, the wildcard will be ignored. For example if you include the condition `Equals any of doc*`, only files with an extension of `.doc` will be returned. Files with an extension of `.docx` won’t be returned. To return all versions of a file type, used the _property:value_ pair in a keyword query; for example, `filetype:doc*`.
|
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#operators-used-with-conditions)
### Operators used with conditions
When you add a condition, you can select an operator that is relevant to type of property for the condition. The following table describes the operators that are used with conditions and lists the equivalent that is used in the search query.
| Operator | Query equivalent | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| After | `property>date` | Used with date conditions. Returns items that were sent, received, or modified after the specified date. |
| Before | `propertyvalue` | Returns items where the specified property is greater than the specified value.1 |
| Greater or equal | `size>=value` | Returns items where the specified property is greater than or equal to the specified value.1 |
| Less | `sizevalue` | Returns items that don't equal the specified size.1 |
Note
1 This operator is available only for conditions that use the Size property.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#guidelines-for-using-conditions)
### Guidelines for using conditions
Keep the following in mind when using search conditions.
* A condition is logically connected to the keyword query (specified in the keyword box) by the **AND** operator. That means that items have to satisfy both the keyword query and the condition to be included in the results. This is how conditions help to narrow your results.
* If you add two or more unique conditions to a search query (conditions that specify different properties), those conditions are logically connected by the **AND** operator. That means only items that satisfy all the conditions (in addition to any keyword query) are returned.
* If you add more than one condition for the same property, those conditions are logically connected by the **OR** operator. That means items that satisfy the keyword query and any one of the conditions are returned. So, groups of the same conditions are connected to each other by the **OR** operator and then sets of unique conditions are connected by the **AND** operator.
* If you add multiple values (separated by commas or semi-colons) to a single condition, those values are connected by the **OR** operator. That means items are returned if they contain any of the specified values for the property in the condition.
* Any condition that uses an operator with **Contains** and **Equals** logic will return similar search results for simple string searches. A simple string search is a string in the condition that doesn't include a wildcard). For example, a condition that uses **Equals any of** will return the same items as a condition that uses **Contains any of**.
* The search query that is created by using the keywords box and conditions is displayed on the **Search** page, in the details pane for the selected search. In a query, everything to the right of the notation `(c:c)` indicates conditions that are added to the query. `(c:c)` shouldn't be used in manually enetered queries and isn't equal to **AND** or **OR**.
* Conditions only add properties to the search query; they don't add operators. This is why the query displayed in the detail pane doesn't show operators to the right of the `(c:c)` notation. KQL adds the logical operators (according to the previously explained rules) when the executing the query.
* You can use the drag and drop control to resequence the order of conditions. Select the control for a condition and move it up or down.
* As previously explained, some condition properties allow you to type multiple values (separated by semi-colons). Each value is logically connected by the **OR** operator, and results in the query `(filetype=docx) OR (filetype=pptx) OR (filetype=xlsx)`. The following illustration shows an example of a condition with multiple values.
Note
You can't add multiple conditions (by selecting **Add condition** for the same property). Instead, you have to provide multiple values for the condition (separated by semi-colons), as shown in the previous example.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#examples-of-using-conditions-in-search-queries)
### Examples of using conditions in search queries
The following examples show the GUI-based version of a search query with conditions, the search query syntax that is displayed in the details pane of the selected search (which is also returned by the **Get-ComplianceSearch** cmdlet), and the logic of the corresponding KQL query.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#example-1)
#### Example 1
This example returns email items or documents that contain the keyword "report", that were sent or created before April 1, 2021, and that contain the word "northwind" in the subject field of email messages or in the title property of documents. The query excludes Web pages that meet the other search criteria.
**GUI**:
**Search query syntax**:
`report(c:c)(date<2021-04-01)(subjecttitle:"northwind")(-filetype:aspx)`
**Search query logic**:
`report AND (date<2021-04-01) AND (subjecttitle:"northwind") NOT (filetype:aspx)`
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#example-2)
#### Example 2
This example returns email messages or calendar meetings that were sent between December 1, 2019 and November 30, 2020 and that contain words that start with "phone" or "smartphone".
**GUI**:
**Search query syntax**:
`phone* OR smartphone*(c:c)(sent=2019-12-01..2020-11-30)(kind="email")(kind="meetings")`
**Search query logic**:
`phone* OR smartphone* AND (sent=2019-12-01..2020-11-30) AND ((kind="email") OR (kind="meetings"))`
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#special-characters)
Special characters
------------------
Some special characters aren't included in the search index and therefore aren't searchable. This also includes the special characters that represent search operators in the search query. Here's a list of special characters that are either replaced by a blank space in the actual search query or cause a search error.
`+ - = : ! @ # % ^ & ; _ / ? ( ) [ ] { }`
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searchable-sensitive-data-types)
Searchable sensitive data types
-------------------------------
You can use eDiscovery search tools in the compliance portal to search for sensitive data, such as credit card numbers or social security numbers, that is stored in documents on SharePoint and OneDrive for Business sites. You can do this by using the `SensitiveType` property and the name (or ID) of a sensitive information type in a keyword query. For example, the query `SensitiveType:"Credit Card Number"` returns documents that contain a credit card number. The query `SensitiveType:"U.S. Social Security Number (SSN)"` returns documents that contain a U.S. social security number.
To see a list of the sensitive information types that you can search for, go to **Data classifications** > **Sensitive info types** in the compliance portal. Or you can use the **Get-DlpSensitiveInformationType** cmdlet in Security & Compliance PowerShell to display a list of sensitive information types.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#limitations-for-searching-sensitive-data-types)
### Limitations for searching sensitive data types
* To search for custom sensitive information types, you have to specify the ID of the sensitive information type in the `SensitiveType` property. Using the name of a custom sensitive information type (as shown in the example for built-in sensitive information types in the previous section) will return no results. Use the **Publisher** column on the **Sensitive info types** page in the compliance portal (or the **Publisher** property in PowerShell) to differentiate between built-in and custom sensitive information types. Built-in sensitive data types have a value of `Microsoft Corporation` for the **Publisher** property.
To display the name and ID for the custom sensitive data types in your organization, run the following command in Security & Compliance PowerShell:
```
Get-DlpSensitiveInformationType | Where-Object {$_.Publisher -ne "Microsoft Corporation"} | FT Name,Id
```
Then you can use the ID in the `SensitiveType` search property to return documents that contain the custom sensitive data type; for example, `SensitiveType:7e13277e-6b04-3b68-94ed-1aeb9d47de37`
* You can't use sensitive information types and the `SensitiveType` search property to search for sensitive data at-rest in Exchange Online mailboxes. This includes 1:1 chat messages, 1:N group chat messages, and team channel conversations in Microsoft Teams because all of this content is stored in mailboxes. However, you can use data loss prevention (DLP) policies to protect sensitive email data in transit. For more information, see [Learn about data loss prevention](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/dlp-learn-about-dlp) and [Search for and find personal data](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/regulatory/gdpr).
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searching-for-site-content-shared-with-external-users)
Searching for site content shared with external users
-----------------------------------------------------
You can also use eDiscovery search tools in the compliance portal to search for documents stored on SharePoint and OneDrive for Business sites that have been shared with people outside of your organization. This can help you identify sensitive or proprietary information that's being shared outside your organization. You can do this by using the `ViewableByExternalUsers` property in a keyword query. This property returns documents or sites that have been shared with external users by using one of the following sharing methods:
* A sharing invitation that requires users to sign in to your organization as an authenticated user.
* An anonymous guest link, which allows anyone with this link to access the resource without having to be authenticated.
Here are some examples:
* The query `ViewableByExternalUsers:true AND SensitiveType:"Credit Card Number"` returns all items that have been shared with people outside your organization and contain a credit card number.
* The query `ViewableByExternalUsers:true AND ContentType:document AND site:"https://contoso.sharepoint.com/Sites/Teams"` returns a list of documents on all team sites in the organization that have been shared with external users.
Tip
A search query such as `ViewableByExternalUsers:true AND ContentType:document` might return a lot of .aspx files in the search results. To eliminate these (or other types of files), you can use the `FileExtension` property to exclude specific file types; for example `ViewableByExternalUsers:true AND ContentType:document NOT FileExtension:aspx`.
What is considered content that is shared with people outside your organization? Documents in your organization's SharePoint and OneDrive for Business sites that are shared by sending a sharing invitation or that are shared in public locations. For example, the following user activities result in content that is viewable by external users:
* A user shares a file or folder with a person outside your organization.
* A user creates and sends a link to a shared file to a person outside your organization. This link allows the external user to view (or edit) the file.
* A user sends a sharing invitation or a guest link to a person outside your organization to view (or edit) a shared file.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#issues-using-the-viewablebyexternalusers-property)
### Issues using the ViewableByExternalUsers property
While the `ViewableByExternalUsers` property represents the status of whether a document or site is shared with external users, there are some caveats to what this property does and doesn't reflect. In the following scenarios, the value of the `ViewableByExternalUsers` property won't be updated, and the results of a search query that uses this property may be inaccurate.
* Changes to sharing policy, such as turning off external sharing for a site or for the organization. The property will still show previously shared documents as being externally accessible even though external access might have been revoked.
* Changes to group membership, such as adding or removing external users to Microsoft 365 Groups or Microsoft 365 security groups. The property won't automatically be updated for items the group has access to.
* Sending sharing invitations to external users where the recipient hasn't accepted the invitation, and therefore doesn't yet have access to the content.
In these scenarios, the `ViewableByExternalUsers` property won't reflect the current sharing status until the site or document library is recrawled and reindexed.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searching-for-site-content-shared-within-your-organization)
Searching for site content shared within your organization
----------------------------------------------------------
As previously explained, you can use the `SharedWithUsersOWSUser` property so search for documents that have been shared between people in your organization. When a person shares a file (or folder) with another user inside your organization, a link to the shared file appears on the **Shared with me** page in the OneDrive for Business account of the person who the file was shared with. For example, to search for the documents that have been shared with Sara Davis, you can use the query `SharedWithUsersOWSUser:"sarad@contoso.com"`. If you export the results of this search, the original documents (located in the content location of the person who shared the documents with Sara) will be downloaded.
Documents must be explicitly shared with a specific user to be returned in search results when using the `SharedWithUsersOWSUser` property. For example, when a person shares a document in their OneDrive account, they have the option to share it with anyone (inside or outside the organization), share it only with people inside the organization, or share it with a specific person. Here's a screenshot of the **Share** window in OneDrive that shows the three sharing options.
Only documents that are shared by using the third option (shared with **Specific people**) will be returned by a search query that uses the `SharedWithUsersOWSUser` property.
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#searching-for-skype-for-business-conversations)
Searching for Skype for Business conversations
----------------------------------------------
You can use the following keyword query to specifically search for content in Skype for Business conversations:
```
kind:im
```
The previous search query also returns chats from Microsoft Teams. To prevent this, you can narrow the search results to include only Skype for Business conversations by using the following keyword query:
```
kind:im AND subject:conversation
```
The previous keyword query excludes chats in Microsoft Teams because Skype for Business conversations are saved as email messages with a Subject line that starts with the word "Conversation".
To search for Skype for Business conversations that occurred within a specific date range, use the following keyword query:
```
kind:im AND subject:conversation AND (received=startdate..enddate)
```
[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-keyword-queries-and-search-conditions#character-limits-for-searches)
Character limits for searches
-----------------------------
There's a 4,000 character limit for search queries when searching for content in SharePoint sites and OneDrive accounts. Here's how the total number of characters in the search query are calculated:
* The characters in keyword search query (including both user and filter fields) count against this limit.
* The characters in any location property (such as the URLs for all the SharePoint sites or OneDrive locations being searched) count against this limit.
* The characters in all the search permissions filters that are applied to the user running the search count against the limit.
For more information about character limits, see [eDiscovery search limits](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/ediscovery-limits-for-content-search#search-limits).
Note
The 4,000 character limit applies to Content search, eDiscovery (Standard), and eDiscovery (Premium).
* * *
Feedback
--------
Feedback
--------
Coming soon: Throughout 2024 we will be phasing out GitHub Issues as the feedback mechanism for content and replacing it with a new feedback system. For more information see: [https://aka.ms/ContentUserFeedback](https://aka.ms/ContentUserFeedback).
Submit and view feedback for
Additional resources
--------------------
* * *
Training
### In this article
[4] Title: A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
[4] URL Source: https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query
[4] Description: Clear writing is clear thinking. But to make the content accessible? To cut digressions and obscure references to reduce the number of things people need to understand to make sense of your argument? Really? That is against our purposes here. A blog post is a search query.
[4] Published Time: 2022-10-05T18:58:20+00:00
[4] Markdown Content:
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0dbceaf-9fe3-4673-b229-bfb1b5cf8cad_800x588.jpeg)
_This essay is the third part of a series. Here is [part 1](https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then), [part 2](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/training-data), and [part 4](https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-as-communion). They can be read independently._
I was born in July 1989, which means I am of the last generation who will remember the time before the internet. The cables and data centers and hyperlinks grew up around me; they grew with me. I find it hard to disentangle the evolution of my psyche from that of the internet.
Explaining it to my daughter, who was born in 2017, a year when the world’s largest economy had begun tearing itself apart from the tension of this ever-evolving network, I tell her that the internet is like an alien intelligence. We don’t know exactly what it is; it has just landed, and only the first ship. We are trying to figure out how to talk to it. The first generation of explorers have noted that by making certain finger motions you can make the aliens show you images of cats and clothes, or tell you all the ways the world is falling apart.
For a long time, I thought this was all there was to it. I could tap the keyboard in a particular way and the screen would show me the weather, or tell me which translation of the Iliad to read and then make someone jump in a truck and drive it to our house. I preferred the Iliad to the screen.
But then, late 2021, after I had been making intricate finger movements again, I woke up in our guesthouse before sunrise and noticed that something had changed.
During the night, the internet had been set in motion. Tossing hither and thither in silence—as the fields lay frozen and waiting and the hedgehog slept in its pile of leaves—the internet had rearranged itself around me.
I had written an essay about Ivan Illich and systems thinking, a topic I had never found anyone else intrigued by, and which magazines thought below a rejection letter—and the internet had suddenly reshaped itself so that my keyboard hooked up to the screens of a bunch of people who wanted to talk about these topics, and a little later, their keyboards hooked up to mine.
I had written for 15 years, but never before had this happened. I had conjured a minor conference! And I hadn’t even known that you could _do_ that.
[Upgrade to paid](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=web&utm_source=magaziney-home-page&just_signed_up=true&requires_confirmation=&subscription_id=51966669&next=https%3A%2F%2Fescapingflatland.substack.com%2F)
This gave me a first glimpse of the social mechanics of the internet. Looking at the traffic data, and talking to readers, I could retrace how my words had traveled through the network, and I got a sense of why. I didn’t fully understand it; I don’t think anyone does. But like a scientist who’s got hold of an alien artifact, I proceeded by gleefully and semi-randomly pushing every button I could find to see what happened. I would think of a series of funny finger movements and then I’d say to myself, LOL I wonder what this combination does? And then I’d try.
The way the machine seemed to work was:
1. The more precise and niche the words I input, the better the internet would match me with people I could forge meaningful relationships with. This precision was hard for me, partly because my sense for how communication is supposed to work is shaped by reading mass media. Writing for a general public, you need to be broad and a bit bland. I didn’t want a general public. I wanted a specific set of people, the people who could help me along as a human being obsessed with certain intellectual problems. I didn’t know who these people _were_. I only knew that they existed. Hence my writing was a search query. It needed to be phrased in such a way that it found these people and, if necessary, filtered others.
2. The pleasant parts of the internet seemed to be curated by human beings, not algorithms. For my writing to find its way in this netherworld, I needed to have a rough sense of how information flowed down there. The pattern was this: words flowed from the periphery to the centers. This was a surprisingly rapid stream. Then the words cascaded from the center down in a broader but slower stream to the periphery again.
I will spend the rest of this essay unpacking those two statements.
It will seem like I am mainly talking about how to use writing to forge meaningful relationships. I think doing that is beautiful and important. But lurking behind it is a larger idea. Namely, that [you can shape yourself by reshaping your relationships](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then). By changing who you are addressing, and the responses you garner, you steer your development. You [become more agentic](https://tomcritchlow.com/2022/08/29/blogging-agency/).
Human brains are wired such that we get rewarded for attending to surprisal. If we turn our attention toward things that surprise us we get _excited_—and our model of the world changes. It grows more complex.
This is easy at first. My one-year-old was in complete rapture today on seeing a hen. But after a while, hens do not surprise us anymore, even if they are scratching dirt. We need a bigger hit to get the same high. To make hens interesting again, you could perhaps read about how they originally lived in the jungle, or you might get into the biology of egg production, or, more likely, you’ll pursue something more interesting than hens. Any which way, by pursuing your interest, you will move toward complexity. The simple things do not surprise you anymore. So you turn your attention to more complicated things. This is an amazing algorithm: do interesting things and magically arrive at a complex understanding of the world.
Sadly, it also leads you down a path that will likely end in existential loneliness and sobbing. What leads you there is the fact that the particular complexity that catches your interest is highly idiosyncratic. People get interested in all sorts of things. I have heard, from credible sources, that there even exist people who are interested in the names of Brazilian soccer players! Having idiosyncratic interests that grow in complexity means that _if you pursue_ _them too far you will end up obsessed with things that no one else around you cares about_.
(There is a counteracting force in that humans tend to mimic the interests of those around them. But this is of little help for those of us for whom ”those around them” mostly means niche bloggers, contributors at Wikipedia, and [Erasmus of Rotterdam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus).)
People feeling alone in their interests has always been true to a certain extent, but the internet has made it much worse. The excess of information allows you to travel down your path of interest with mad velocity. On the internet, Wonderland is recursive, with rabbit holes opening up to yet more rabbit holes; you never stop falling. And the further you fall, the less likely it is that anyone you’ve ever met is falling where you are. This will make you immensely sad. You will visit your parents, and when they ask you about your life you will have two choices. You can either be incomprehensible and see them grow concerned about things you are excited about, or you can talk about surface-level things and cry a little when you are alone at night.
The reason I’m spelling out this dynamic is twofold. First, you _can_ get out of this mess if you want to. You do that by writing online (or publishing cool pieces of software, or videos, or whatever makes you tickle—as long as you work in public). Second, if you want to get out of the mess the key lies exactly in understanding that you are not the only person who has no one to talk to about the things you get obsessed by.
When writing in public, there is a common idea that you should make it _accessible_. This is a left over from mass media. Words addressed to a large and diverse set of people need to be simple and clear and free of jargon. It is valuable to write clearly of course, to a degree. Clear writing is clear thinking. But to make the content accessible? To cut digressions and obscure references to reduce the number of things people need to understand to make sense of your argument? Really?
That is against our purposes here. A blog post is _a search query_. You write to find your tribe; you write so they will know what kind of fascinating things they should route to your inbox. If you follow common wisdom, you will cut exactly the things that will help you find these people. It is like [the time](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/06/19/american-sublime) someone told the composer Morton Feldman he should write for “the man in the street”. Feldman went over and looked out the window, and who did he see? Jackson Pollock.
Write for Jackson Pollock.
The people you will be able to have deep conversations with have, like you, already been surprised by the simple, clear things. They need more to get high. And this “more” will be wildly idiosyncratic. It cannot be summarized in a list of writing rules.
So what do you do?
You ask yourself: What would have made me jump off my chair if I had read it six months ago (or a week ago, or however fast you write)? If you have figured out something that made you ecstatic, this is what you should write. And you do not dumb it down, because you were not stupid six months ago, you just knew less. You also write with as much useful detail and beauty as you can muster, because that is what you would have wanted.
Six months ago, I was thinking about how large language models will affect how we learn. The essay [Using GPT-3 to augment human learning](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/gpt-3) would have made me jump off my chair and run out to Johanna talking excitedly and incomprehensibly; that’s why I wrote it.
To make it interesting for myself, I made it longish and detailed. I like it when people don’t just talk in the abstract but show you with examples, preferably many examples, and preferably taken from the real world so they are messy. Some people find this excess annoying. I don’t. Rich data lets me develop a tacit understanding of the domain. So I wrote 3000 words about how to prompt GPT-3 in ways that make it more truthful, and I included a long dialogue where the AI diagnoses Johanna’s itching hands; and another one about how cities affect innovation; and a third about digitally mediated apprenticeships. I also made the essay a bit literary and flamboyant, which you are not “supposed” to do when writing about AI, at least not if you want the average LessWrong reader to upvote it. I’m not the average Less Wrong reader; I much prefer Thomas Bernhard’s rants to Eliezer Yudkowsky’s. Hence, I made it flamboyant.
I’m not saying it was a great essay; I’m saying _I_ would have loved it. The essay would have answered most of the questions I had, and it would have given me a new more complex understanding of language models that I could have used to get excited by even more obscure things. And because the internet is big, there were a few thousand people who felt the same way—and I felt really deeply for these people.
It is crazy-beautiful to have a stranger arrive in your inbox, and they are excited by exactly the same things as you! You start dropping the most obscure references, and they’re like, yeah, read that, love it. The first handful of times it happened, Johanna asked me what was wrong. I was crying in the kitchen.
Those were tears of homecoming.
And—as if that wasn’t good enough—now these people are routing me interesting things about language models, cow breeding, Quintilian, 19th-century dictionaries, graph-based operating systems . . . and on and on . . . I get more and better input than I could ever have found on my own, a lot of it from sources outside the clear web, tinkerers writing to me about tools they are building, or new observations they have made.
In other words, I have, to a degree, automated my obsessions now. I have summoned a milieu that pulls me where I want to go!
A search query doesn’t have to be a 5000-word effort post to work (though the internet does reward that amply). Anything that would have been useful to you sometime in the past will do. Alexey Guzey makes lists, half of which are made up of quotes, and they are incredibly useful and have been instrumental in reshaping his network so that he could start New Science. Most good Twitter accounts can be viewed in the same way.
If you follow the advice above, you will write essays that almost no one likes.
Luckily, _almost no one_ multiplied by the entire population of the internet is plenty if you can only find them.
How do you do that?
Well, you can probably spot a few of them already, even if you are a fairly naive internet user. The people you can spot will be those that have large followings. This might depress you. The famous people will seem out of reach, and the rest of the internet will seem to be pure madness.
When starting out, my model of how it would work was this: I wouldn’t find any readers. And if I did, they would be plebeians like myself, and then, maybe? hopefully? as I found more of them, I would level up? so that I could connect to people with increasingly large followings? like climbing a corporate hierarchy? This is not how it works.
The social structure of the internet is shaped like a river.
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f7da57d-e7a6-4d1f-ad4c-60c2691b69ca_1000x750.jpeg)
People with big followings, say someone like Sam Harris, is the mouth of the Mississippi emptying into the Mexican Gulf. Sam has millions of tributaries. There are perhaps a few hundred people Sam pays close attention to, and these in turn have a few hundred they listen to—tributaries flowing into headwaters flowing into rivers. The way messages spread on the internet is by flowing up this order of streams, from people with smaller networks to those with larger, and then it spreads back down through the larger networks. Going over land, from one tributary to another, is harder than going up the stream order and then down again.
This dynamic is easier to spot on Twitter, where you get notified every time someone likes or retweets what you have written (compared to a blog where the traffic data is more murky). When I tried out the title of this piece as a tweet—a primitive way to A/B-test—I could map that dynamic.
It was not a viral tweet. I am a minor tributary in the Twitter river system (my follower count was ~100 at the time). But a few of my followers were slightly larger. They had found me, I assume, because I made replies to their tweets that they sort of liked. Two of these, [Stian Håklev](https://twitter.com/houshuang) and [Tom Critchlow](https://twitter.com/tomcritchlow), resonated with the tweet, so they retweeted it. A few others gave it a heart, which is also a way to route tweets (though it is a weaker form of routing than a retweet).
Then a few accounts that were an order of magnitude larger still retweeted it, because they followed Stian and Tom and now saw it. And from there it rushed up the stream order. It only took an hour or two for the tweet to reach the largest accounts it would reach (Tiago Forte with 84k followers, who retweeted it, and Balaji Srinavasan with 681K, who routed it on through a like). But _the smaller accounts took much longer_. Information rushes up and then trickles down. The larger accounts are not larger without a reason, but, at least in part, because they spend more time routing information in the network!
(This, by the way, is how you sent letters before the post service was established. In the 1600s, if you were an intellectual who wanted to send a letter to another intellectual, you’d send it to someone who could forward it to Marin Mersenne—because he knew everyone who knew anyone and would surely know someone who could find the person you wanted to reach. This I learned from a tweet by [Visa](https://twitter.com/visakanv), who is the modern day version of Mersenne.)
The trick, then, is this. You take the person you think is closest to the person (or type of person) you want to talk to and send what you write to this person. A subreddit is a good place to start. I usually do this by collecting interesting people on Twitter through good reply game. Then I can simply post my essays there and know they will have a chance of seeing it. Occasionally—and this makes more sense in the start—I send essays to people directly, in their direct messages or to their email. I sent [Apprenticeship Online](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/apprenticeship-online) to José Rincón, mostly as a way to give context to a few comments I had on one of his essays. He didn’t answer, but he did tweet out the essay, which brought in a handful of interesting people in my orbit. It turns out that if you’ve written something that _you_ find interesting, it is not unlikely that people you like will find it interesting too, and pass it on if you give them the chance.
As you start routing information and putting out blog posts, you will begin to accumulate connections. Useful information will start to stream toward you, turning you into a small hub yourself. This will allow you to collect and curate information and route it back out, which will allow even more people to connect to you, in a flywheel that lets you do increasingly useful and good work. I especially enjoy it when intelligent people attack me; I then invite them to comment on upcoming drafts.
You can also post to subreddits and forums, like [LessWrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/) or [the SlateStarCodex subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/), that act like intellectual cafés on the internet. Pasting your posts there, it is easy to find community when you are starting out; you don't have to scream into the void. And, more importantly, a lot of people pass through these cafés, and if they are _your kind_ they can help spread your work in the netherworld of personal connections and open weird doors on the internet for you. I relied heavily on forums in the beginning, gaining my first hundred or so subscribers this way, but they are growing less important now that I have collected a set of connections of my own. I can get a more precise spread of my essays by just emailing them to my subscribers and putting out a few tweets. But I feel deep gratitude, especially to LessWrong, which provides me with an editor who helps me with grammar and fact-checking.
By the way, the reason you will eventually grow out of forums is that _they are search queries written by other people_. LessWrong was summoned into existence by [Eliezer Yudkowsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky) and [Robin Hanson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hanson) writing a sequence of exceptionally powerful search queries (on Overcoming bias), blog posts so strong that the networks they created survived the exodus of the original nodes.
This is what online writing is at its limit—the summoning of a new culture.
If we squint a little, we could even say that this is how the internet itself came into existence. In 1963, [J. C. R. Licklider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider) wrote [a memo](http://worrydream.com/refs/Licklider-IntergalacticNetwork.pdf) about an “intergalactic computer network”, and that search query was so powerful it summoned the aliens.
We’re all living inside his search query now.
Warmly,
Henrik
This is the third part of a series. Here are the previous parts:
[First we shape our social graph; then it shapes us --------------------------------------------------](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then)
[](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then)
[This essay is the first of a series. Here is part 2 and part 3. Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment. Marshall McLuhan The inside of a womb looks as it did 70,000 years ago, but the world outside has changed. In July 2021, when our daughter was born, the night sky didn’t light up with stars; it was lit up by the warm afterglow of sodium street lamps. Green-clad women carried the baby away, pumping oxygen into her mouth. It was like something out of a sci-fi: she had woken up, without a memory, in an alien world. Smeared in white-yellow fat, she didn’t know who she was nor what she was doing here. The only thing she knew, genetically, was that she needed to figure this out fast or die.](https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then)
[5] Title: Keywords vs. Search Queries: What's the Difference?
[5] URL Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/05/25/keywords-vs-search-queries
[5] Description: Search queries, on the other hand, are the real-world terms that people use to find those pages through paid and organic search. So, for example, you might bid on the keyword “skinny jeans.” By looking at your search query report in AdWords, you can see all the queries that visitors typed ...
[5] Markdown Content:
Keywords vs. Search Queries: What's the Difference?
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[Home](https://www.wordstream.com/) — [Blog](https://www.wordstream.com/blog) — Keywords vs. Search Queries: What’s the Difference?
Keywords vs. Search Queries: What’s the Difference?
===================================================
Author: [Elisa Gabbert](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/author/elisa-gabbert)
Last Updated: November 27, 2023 | [Paid Search Marketing](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/category/paid-search-marketing)
* * *
In casual conversation, the terms “keyword” and “search query” are often used interchangeably, but there is actually a difference. So what is the difference between a keyword and a search query?
A **keyword** is sort of like the Platonic ideal of a search query – it’s an abstraction that we extrapolate from multiple search queries.
A **search query or search term** is the actual word or string of words that a search engine user types into the search box. You can think of a search query as the real-world application of a keyword – it may be misspelled, out of order or have other words tacked on to it, or conversely it might be identical to the keyword.
As search marketers, what we target are **keywords**.
* In **SEO**, we target these abstractions by optimizing on-page content (using the keywords in URLs, title tags, body copy, image file names, meta descriptions and so on), by building inbound links with keywords in the anchor text, etc.
* In **PPC**, we target keywords by bidding on them and using them in our ads and landing pages.
**Search queries**, on the other hand, are the real-world terms that people use to find those pages through paid and organic search.
So, for example, you might bid on the keyword “skinny jeans.” By looking at your search query report in AdWords, you can see all the queries that visitors typed in to trigger your ad – assuming you’re using [broad match](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/03/31/adwords-matching-options-guide), these queries might include the exact keyword as well as endless variations like “jeans skinny,” “womens skinny jeans,” “dark wash skinny jeans,” “skinny jeans size 0” and so on.
If some of those search queries fall into a clear, repeating pattern (for example, “women’s skinny jeans”), you might go on to create an ad group and corresponding ads for that search query, at which point the search query would become one of your keywords.
Search queries are a larger set than keywords, and by looking at search queries we can find new keywords to target in our search marketing campaigns. (Search query mining is also a good way to find [negative keywords](https://www.wordstream.com/negative-keywords)).
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##### Meet The Author
### [Elisa Gabbert](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/author/elisa-gabbert)
Elisa Gabbert is WordStream’s Director of Content and SEO. Likes include wine, karaoke, poker, ping-pong, perfume, and poetry.
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