How to Use Search in ProProfs Knowledge Base

ProProfs Knowledge Base supports a robust search functionality that lets users quickly find the desired information. 

You can easily add this search box to your website or web application to minimize user navigation efforts.
 

The search box can help users:

• Find relevant results against their query by typing a keyword or string of keywords

• Troubleshoot their issues and save time & effort in contacting the support team

A preview of the search feature in the ProProfs Knowledge Base:

Table of Contents:

• Page Suggestions

• Full-site Search

• Keywords

• How does ProProfs Knowledge Base Search Work?

• How to Hide a Page from the Search Results

• How to Hide Search Box from Home Page

• How to Add a Search Box to a Page

• How to Add a Search Box to Your Website or Web Application

 Page Suggestions

When you enter text into the search box located on the top right, matching page suggestions will appear to help you quickly navigate to the desired page. 

The page title matches the suggestions. You can choose one of the suggestions to navigate directly to the page. Else, you can ignore it and perform a site search.

Hover the cursor over to the title and click on it to open. You can also scroll to see more suggestions.

 Full-site Search

The algorithms will perform the search sitewide. Draft pages and pages marked to be excluded from the search will not return in the results. Search will match with each page’s content, page title, search keywords, and table of contents name. 

To perform a search, simply enter the search text into the search bar and click on the search icon, or hit Enter.

• If you are in Tab View, the search results will open in a new tab.

• To open a search result, click on that page title in the search results.

• The searched keyword will appear in bold throughout the page.

• If the search keyword is part of toggle content, the toggle content will expand and show the searched keyword.

 Search Keywords

Search keywords allow you to provide additional searchable text and targeted keywords for a page, such as “password, password reset, lost password, forgot password,” that the system will use when performing a search.

In the page editor,

• Click on the gear icon for more settings.

• Enter keywords in the search results box.

• Check the box next to “Show page in search result.”

• Click Save.

 How does ProProfs Knowledge Base Search Work?

When you enter a phrase:

The search algorithm matches the entire phrase with the article’s title, content, and keywords(tags).

Next, it matches the combination of words in the phrase with the title, content, and keywords(tags) to show relevant results.

Lastly, it matches the words in the phrase individually and returns with the articles that contain those words.

 How to Hide a Page from the Search Results

A published page appears in the search results by default. However, you can hide a page from the search results.

• Click on the gear icon.

• Uncheck the box next to “Show page in search result.”

 How to Hide Search Box from Home Page

If your homepage has a prominent search box on the page, you may not want to have another search box on the top right.

To hide the search box from the homepage:

1. Log in to your account (as an administrator) and click Settings.

2. Select a site from the dropdown.

3. Click Configure.

4. Scroll down to the “Hide global search box on home page.”

5. Switch it to Yes and Save.

 How to Add a Search Box to a Page

You can also add a search box to any page you create in ProProfs. To add a search box to a page, add the following code to the page's source code:

This will function as the global search box and return the search results. Learn how to access the source code of a page.

 How to Add a Search Box to Your Own Website or Web Application

You can also pass a search query from your own website or web application to your ProProfs site. It allows you to add a search box to your own website and pass the search term to your ProProfs documentation site.

To do this, you will need to add a small piece of HTML code to your website or web application:

Change the URL to your ProProfs site, for example, site.helpdocsonline.com. If you have a custom domain set up, you would use that URL.

 Download a sample HTML file

That is all about the search feature in the ProProfs Knowledge Base.