Only articles are searched by default because most users are only readers. Or consider adding what you were looking for to the Requested articles page. Your own browser, to search the current page only. The format of the text that is entered is called search string syntax. The search results page is displayed when a search is done from the search page, when a search from the regular search box does not exactly match a page title, or when any parameters or special characters are included in a search string. Note that search results include content from templates displayed on the pages searched. Note that articles on Wikipedia don’t have subpages, but the pages of the other namespaces do. For example, credit card -“credit card” finds all articles with credit and card except those with the phrase credit card. Their search term may be a word or a phrase. If stem matching is not wanted, use double quotes around the word or phrase you want to match verbatim.
A direct match of a basic search string will navigate you directly to Wikipedia’s article that has that title. Any given article receives a score on dozens of different topics, and therefore may appear under different keywords. Because the default search domain is a settable preference, any query you intend to share, publish, or save in a search link might need the search domain explicitly given in the search link in order to ensure consistent search results among all users, at any time. In any case a query always can specify a namespace to make the search domain explicit and override any default. A namespace entered in a query always takes priority for determination of the search domain of a query, and will at any time override your default search domain, or any displayed profile. JavaScript and skins have an effect on the search/navigate default behavior. Starting with the articles listed at Category: German chemists, only the ones that have the word Berlin in their text. This lets you find all the articles being considered for deletion. Input the canonical page name to find all usage of the template, but use any of its redirect page names finds just that naming.
The main parameters are namespace:, intitle:, insource:, incategory:, and prefix: (namespace as used here isn’t literal – use the name of the actual namespace desired). We use the term grey-space instead of whitespace here to include the space character itself and all these characters. The search box is an input box with the term “Search Wikipedia” in it. Wikipedia uses a powerful search engine, with a search box on every page. This search box will produce the search results page showing what all matches your search on Wikipedia. Results match word stems, along with their various tenses (past tense, plural tense, etc.), except for anything included between double quotation marks. So, you don’t have to type in diacritical letters, and your terms will still match. That will display all the subpages of User:AzaToth. This will work since all NYC bridges are categorized in subcategories, and incategory: doesn’t search in subcategories but deepcat: does. Topic-related search data is updated weekly, so recently created articles might not show up in topic-based search queries.
Only mainspace articles belong to topics. The link Special:Search, which can be inserted onto user pages or project pages, for example, also leads to the search page. User scripts might be designed to work on the search results page but not the search page, for example. The search results page looks just like the search page, with the results for your search query presented below it. If you’re looking for something on a talk (or, sometimes, project) page, people tend to leave a signature after each edit, and such pages are usually set up so old edits roll off onto archive pages. This finds pages that use the specified Template|template. This can find template arguments, URLs, links, html, etc. It has two forms, one is an indexed search, and the other is regex-based. Namespace aliases are accepted, capitalization is entirely ignored, and redirects are found, all in one name-search. Files from Wikimedia Commons are included within the results when the File: namespace has been selected. Portal:Chi Portal namespace page names that begin with Portal:Chi and have the word language in the page. By default, results are ordered by relevance. See Preferences → Gadgets Browsing There are also custom user-scripts to make all search results always open in a new tab.