# When are we going to get search capability on terms of less than 4 characters?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-are-we-going-to-get-search-capability-on-terms-of-less-than-4-characters/366966>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [August 2, 2006, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-are-we-going-to-get-search-capability-on-terms-of-less-than-4-characters/366966 "2006-08-02T02:27:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-are-we-going-to-get-search-capability-on-terms-of-less-than-4-characters/366966/1 "2006-08-02T02:27:31Z")

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And why don’t we have it already?

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**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-are-we-going-to-get-search-capability-on-terms-of-less-than-4-characters/366966/2 "2006-08-02T03:25:40Z")

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Because it would require much more indexing, using up more space and memory and slowing down the servers. Searches are done on indexs that need to be updated regularly. If you require strings of 3 chars to be indexed it’s going to make things worse on the site. 4 chars and greater is a good balance between usefulness and performance.

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**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-are-we-going-to-get-search-capability-on-terms-of-less-than-4-characters/366966/3 "2006-08-02T03:35:57Z")

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It would be nice, though, if we could petition to have certain three-character terms that are unlikely to be terribly frequent (e.g., GRE, XM, IBM) added into the index. But it’s not something I view as essential.

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**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-are-we-going-to-get-search-capability-on-terms-of-less-than-4-characters/366966/4 "2006-08-02T11:50:17Z")

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I do believe the current settings do not allow selected terms, it’s based on number alone. It’s all or nothing.

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**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-are-we-going-to-get-search-capability-on-terms-of-less-than-4-characters/366966/5 "2006-08-02T12:50:19Z")

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Fair enough.

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**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2006, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-are-we-going-to-get-search-capability-on-terms-of-less-than-4-characters/366966/6 "2006-08-04T04:29:11Z")

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And why does searching for “Titles Only” take so much longer then “Entire post”?