How search ranks results
Linkgarden’s search is not a filter, it is a ranking. Every bookmark, folder, and tag is scored against what you typed, and the ones that score at all are shown best-first within their group.
The tiers
Section titled “The tiers”A bookmark is scored by the first of these that matches:
| Tier | Match |
|---|---|
| Best | Your text is a prefix of the bookmark’s displayed title |
| The name contains your text anywhere | |
| The address contains your text anywhere | |
| The notes contain your text anywhere | |
| Last | A fuzzy match against the displayed title |
Folders and tags are scored the same way against their names, minus the address and notes tiers, and minus nothing else.
This ordering is what makes typing swi put Swift Evolution above a bookmark
that merely mentions “swi” in a paragraph of notes. Where you matched is a
better signal than whether you matched.
Ties are broken by the underlying order — newest first for bookmarks — so results never shuffle unpredictably between keystrokes.
Why a prefix beats a contains-match
Section titled “Why a prefix beats a contains-match”The displayed title of a bookmark is its name, or its address if it has no name. A prefix match on that is the strongest evidence you know what you are looking for and are typing it out. A contains-match anywhere in the name is weaker; a match buried in a long note is weaker still, and often incidental.
Comparison ignores case, accents, and full-width/half-width variants throughout,
so cafe finds Café and CAFÉ finds cafe.
The fuzzy tier
Section titled “The fuzzy tier”If nothing matched literally, Linkgarden tries again with a typo allowance.
Your query is split into words, and each word gets its own budget of allowed edits based on how long it is:
| Word length | Edits allowed |
|---|---|
| 1–2 characters | 0 |
| 3–5 characters | 1 |
| 6–8 characters | 2 |
| 9 or more | 3 |
Longer words get more slack because a longer word is more likely to be mistyped
and less likely to collide with something unrelated. Very short words get none
at all — one edit away from to is half the dictionary.
An edit is an insertion, a deletion, a substitution, or two adjacent characters
swapped. That last one matters: teh for the is one of the most common typing
mistakes there is, and treating it as a single edit rather than two is what
keeps it inside a short word’s budget.
Each query word is matched against the start of some word in the title, not
against the whole thing, so evol still finds Evolution.
Every query word must find a match somewhere in the title. Typing two words narrows the results; it does not widen them. The closer the overall match, the higher it ranks.
What is not searched
Section titled “What is not searched”- Bookmarks in Recently Deleted. Search only looks at your live library.
- The notes on folders and tags — they do not have any.
- Folder and tag names when scoring a bookmark. A bookmark filed under
Reading is not found by typing
reading; the folder is found instead, and clicking it takes you to its bookmarks.
Why sort order does not apply
Section titled “Why sort order does not apply”The list and grid views let you choose an order, because in those views you are browsing and the order is the structure. In search, the order is the answer — re-sorting the results alphabetically would throw away the ranking you asked for.