How does the search work?

You can search your media by text both on your website and in your admin space. Text search checks selected metadata fields (keywords, title, description, location…), but works differently in each space. Similarity search and face recognition use image analysis instead: please refer to the help on those features for more details!

Search in the admin space (“internal search”)

When you search for images within your admin space (My images & videos), the system looks for exact matches. For example, a search for cats will not return an image with the keyword “cat”. Partial matching and wildcards are not supported.

You can limit the search to look only at keywords instead of the other searchable metadata by using the Keywords search field.

You can also save a search as a Smart Collection. The internal admin search is also used by the automation features.

The text search is not case-sensitive. It looks at the following metadata: filename, title, ALT text, description, location, city, country, state, world region, keywords and author.

Special keywords in the admin search

In your admin space Keywords advanced search field, use * to match files that have keywords, or ! to match files that don’t have any keyword.

Search on your website

On your website, text search looks at the same metadata fields and also at gallery names. It recognizes word variations: for example, a search for cats will return images with the keyword “cat”. It relies on a separate search index, which is updated in the background.

Website search results are cached to keep searches fast. After you upload or update media, or change galleries, the changes may not appear immediately in search results. Both indexing and cached results or gallery lists can delay updates, even for a new search query.

Hidden galleries

Hidden galleries are normally excluded from website-wide public search results. They can nevertheless be searchable in the following cases:

  • They can be included in public searches by forcing their public indexing (see below), but in this case their content is accessible to everyone even when they are protected or under a protected gallery.
  • A search initiated from (or limited to) a hidden gallery includes its media (and eligible descendants under the same protection scope). A search within a descendant of that hidden gallery searches the descendant’s own subtree under the same rules, not its parents or siblings.
  • Website-wide searches can include hidden protected galleries to which the visitor has opened access by password or login, subject to the private-search rules below.

Galleries protected by password or login

Like with hidden galleries, media in protected galleries are not included in your website’s public search results by default, unless you force their public indexing.

When a visitor accesses a private gallery by login, the other private galleries they have access to (up to 20) and their sub-galleries under the same protection scope are included in subsequent website-wide searches.

When testing access rights and private searches, use a fresh private browsing session to ensure that no previous authentication is still active.

Including / excluding a gallery from the public search

In a gallery’s Authorizations panel, you can force a specific gallery to be either included in the results of public searches (made by unauthenticated users on your website), or excluded from them, via the Include images in public search option.

  • When a gallery is included in public searches, anybody will be able to find and access its media. Forcing inclusion can be useful for hidden galleries that you still want to be findable. For protected galleries, it can be used to make the content publicly searchable without letting visitors view the whole gallery.
  • When a gallery is not included in public searches, its content is excluded from website-wide public search results. It can still appear in a search within that gallery, or to a parent gallery under the same protection scope. It can also appear in private website-wide searches once the visitor has opened access to its protection scope.

This setting applies only to the gallery and does not impact the indexation of its sub-galleries. When changing the setting, an option to change it also on sub-galleries is nonetheless available.

When does website search default to the current gallery?

Your website’s search box defaults to searching the current gallery and its eligible sub-galleries when all of the following apply:

  • The gallery is not publicly indexed, for example because it is hidden, protected by password or login, or explicitly excluded from public searches.
  • The gallery is not used as your website’s front page.
  • The gallery (including its sub-galleries) is not empty.

Otherwise, the initial default is a website-wide search, subject to the visitor’s access rights. A protected gallery forced into public indexing also defaults to website-wide search.

On the search results page, visitors can switch to Search all galleries, or use the link naming the gallery to limit the search to that gallery and its eligible sub-galleries.

Searching a gallery and its sub-galleries on your website

When searching within a gallery, all its sub-galleries are included within the same protection scope. This includes eligible sub-galleries excluded from public search indexing. For example, a search within a private event gallery also finds matching media in sub-galleries that inherit its protection settings.

A sub-gallery that introduces its own hidden status, password or separate access rules starts a different protection scope and is excluded from the parent-gallery search, even if the visitor can access it separately. To search it, open that sub-gallery and search there, or use a website-wide search where the visitor’s access rights allow it.

These rules also apply to face recognition and similarity searches when searching within a gallery.

For galleries containing more than 2000 sub-galleries, the search operates on a best-effort basis to stay fast, and some matching media may be missing from the results, especially if relevant files are present in other galleries. Searching within a smaller sub-gallery can help.

Grouping search results by gallery on your website

When your galleries contain very similar images, you can group results by galleries via My website / Setup / Website search.

This way, when performing a search, your client gets the list of galleries having images that match, along with the number of results of matches per gallery.

Displaying search box on another website

You can display a search box on any website by adjusting and pasting the following piece of HTML code (replace YOUR-PHOTODECK-URL-HERE by your own website URL):

<form accept-charset="UTF-8" action="///YOUR-PHOTODECK-URL-HERE" method="get"> <input name="search" placeholder="Image search" type="search"> <input name="commit" type="submit" value="Go"> </form>

Website search result limits

Website searches return at most 2000 results.

FAQ

  • How do I find and select images and files in sub-galleries in the admin space?

    You can search a parent gallery together with its sub-galleries, then select all matching media for a batch action. Open the parent gallery under My images & videos, open the search filters, select Include files from subgalleries, and run the search. Leave the text search empty to show all media in that gallery and its descendants, or use search terms and filters to narrow the results. Click All to select all matching media, including results on other pages, then apply a batch action from the side panel.