How does search work?

I tried to search for a recent post of mine and I couldn't find it.

Do you periodically build a search index of some sort that serves as the basis for the search?

Or does a search request go against the raw post data?

If the former, it looks like maybe the search index hasn't been rebuilt in some time.

If the latter, then I'm confused why my search is not working.

Indexing is run overnight around 3am-4am - it's really taxing on the server.  I think it's running every other day or 3 nights.  I may try and rund it  nightly - need to check the cron.

For many years - we've used sphinx for this - if anyone knows of a better alternative- let me know.  Also, one that is free. 

I'm not familiar with sphinx or similar products.

I guess the indexing process re-indexes the entire database (or whatever tables are involved). Is there any way to fine tune it so that it only indexes data based on a date, simply adding to the search index, rather than rebuilding from scratch?

Poking around, I came across something called elasticsearch. Have you looked into that?

drummerboy said:

Poking around, I came across something called elasticsearch. Have you looked into that?

I haven't - looks like it starts around $95 a month.  And primarily uses cloud data storage.   Also, we're using mysql - for that it mainly handles logs and metrics.

Okay this thread title is funny given today’s news.