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You can create traditional, free-text search scenarios and data-centric queries involving exact matching using _filters_. Search & Navigation also supports data aggregation using _facets_.

Note

When querying for objects inheriting `IContent`, use the `GetContentResult` extensions.

You search and query using an instance of the [IClient](🔗) interface. This and extension methods offer a traditional, object-oriented API and convenient fluent API. Most documentation found here covers the fluent API.

## Searches

You can execute a free-text search for objects of a specific type with the [GetResult](🔗) method, which returns:

  • An object with result items

  • The number of documents that match the search query

  • Facets

  • Information about execution time


Each hit object contains the indexed object, its ID, highlights (if requested), and its score.

Unless specified, searches are performed over indexed properties, including nested properties. You can select which properties to search.

### Wildcard searches
A wildcard is a search technique where a search query includes, for example, an asterisk (\*) to specify any number of unspecified characters.
Note
Excessive use of wildcard searches may seriously impact the performance of your Optimizely Search & Navigation solution, and may result in service unavailability.
Note
Searching with wildcard as prefix is not supported from version 15 of the client API. See [Breaking changes for Find 15](🔗).
**Example:** \*work or \*work\*
Not only would these be performance-heavy, but they may also give irrelevant results and bad relevance.
**Recommendations**
  • Do _not_ search with a wildcard star (\*). For example, avoid this syntax: query.For("\*", x => x.query = "\*");
  • Never use prefix or suffix wildcards or both.
  • Use at least three characters with wildcards.
  • Avoid wildcards on many or all fields.
  • Avoid wildcards on lengthy fields.
## Filter
The service and client API also support filtering. If applied to a free text query, filtering restricts search results to those matching the filters.

If applied without a free text query, filters let you query for objects in an exact manner, similar to traditional database queries.

## Stop words
A “stop word” is a commonly used word that a search engine is programmed to ignore when indexing entries and retrieving search results.
By default, Optimizely Search & Navigation indexes everything and does not apply stop words at the index level. This is because the use of stop words negatively impacts precision. For example, a query containing a stop word matches any document and phrases that it should not. Indexing everything supports exact phrase matches, even if a phrase has a word that one might consider a stop word.
`MoreLikeThis` is a special case. Here, stop words are used when selecting terms from the source document, and the stop word is a part of that specific query.
If you still want to use stop words in a query, remove them from the query string before passing it to Optimizely Search & Navigation.