Search

Backdrop indexes every word of every archived page, making all your content fully searchable. When you type a query, the search engine looks through your archives and returns results ranked by relevance. The search is full-text, meaning it searches the entire body of each archived page, not just titles or URLs.

Search runs across your private archives by default. You can expand the scope as needed.

Search covers the following content across your account:

• Page content — the full body text of every archived HTML and readable page.
• Readable text — the cleaned, extracted text version of each page.
• Annotations — your text highlights and any notes you have attached.
• Collection names and descriptions.
• Entity names tagged on archives.
• File names and descriptions from the Library.

Screenshot images are not searchable by text content, but any notes attached to screenshot annotations are included in search results.

You can narrow your search results using a variety of filters:

• Format — filter by HTML, PDF, screenshot, or readable archives only.
• Collection — search only within a specific collection.
• Entity — show only archives tagged with a specific person, place, organization, or topic.
• Date — limit results to archives created within a date range.

Filters can be combined to pinpoint exactly what you are looking for.

To get the most out of search, try these approaches:

• Use quotes for exact phrase matching — for example, "climate change" returns results containing that exact phrase.
• Search is entity-aware — searching for a person's name also shows archives where that person is tagged as an entity.
• Keep queries concise — one to three keywords usually produce the best results.
• Use filters proactively — narrowing by collection or date can dramatically speed up finding the right archive.

Search by default covers all your archives. You can also search within a specific collection from that collection's page. Team-wide search is available depending on your plan, allowing you to find content across all team members' archives.