# How long does a searchid last?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-a-searchid-last/434073>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [January 18, 2008, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-a-searchid-last/434073 "2008-01-18T20:11:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\
**Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-a-searchid-last/434073/1 "2008-01-18T20:11:54Z")

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When you do a search on the es dee em bee the search gets an ID number (in the url and presumably the search results are stored on the database for quick retreival)

How long do the search results get saved for? Or to put it another way how long can you use the resultant URL (with the id in it) to retreive the search before the system is forced to run the search again?

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2008, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-does-a-searchid-last/434073/2 "2008-01-21T14:40:11Z")

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IIRC, the lifetime of a searchlink here is pretty variable. Presumably, lifetime depends on how how often users hit the system with requests for new searches. It’d make sense to have the software limit the size of its ‘old searches’ cache, but there’s little a lowly user can do to verify that hypothesis.