Searching Backlight

Backlight's search operates on keywords, file names, album titles and image captions. It matches albums containing the search terms, as well as individual images. The search results page will contain two sections, displaying returned albums and returned images separately.

Photos that match on keywords will feature higher in the results. Searching on photos is done primarily on keywords, and secondarily on matches of title, caption and filename. Searches are further ordered based on the proportion of search terms found in the fields.

Search accepts required and omitted terms, and defaults to "OR" behavior.

By "OR" behavior, we meant that a search for "thailand bangkok" would return all hits for either "thailand" or "bangkok".

To require a term, use "+" (plus); this would ensure we only display images of Bangkok, Thailand, and exclude images of Bangkok, Nebraska:

+thailand bangkok

To omit a term, use "-" (minus); this would return all images from Thailand, excluding images of Bangkok:

thailand -bangkok

To search a string of words as if it were a single term, wrap it in either single or double quotation marks:

thailand bangkok "Khaosan Road"

To require or omit a string of words, add the "+" or "-" sign within the quotes:

thailand bangkok "+Khaosan Road"

Let's say you had these photos:

#1 keywords=apple, orange, title=fruit
#2 keywords=apple, orange, title=apple
#3 keywords=apple, title=fruit
#4 keywords=apple, title=apple
#5 title=orange

When searching for the terms apple and orange, the results would be:

#2 (keywords match both search terms, title matches search term)
#1 (keywords match both search terms)
#4 (keywords match one search term, title matches one search term)
#3 (keywords match one search term)
#5 (title matches on search term)

Using keywords in the title or filename will elevate photos in the results over other photos that have the same level of keyword matching.