Skip to main content
Unified Search

How to search your private content and the Stack Overflow public site at the same time.

Loren Alldrin avatar
Written by Loren Alldrin
Updated this week

Applies to: All Stack Overflow for Teams

Overview

Stack Overflow Enterprise's Unified Search feature allows you to search and access knowledge from your private Stack Overflow for Teams site and the public Stack Overflow site at the same time. This gives you the benefits of private and public content in the same search, saving time and greatly increasing the quantity of information at your fingertips.

Learn more about search in the Basic Search and Advanced Search articles.

Use Unified Search

To enable Unified Search, place your cursor in the Search box at the top of the page. A box appears with search tips and an Include results from stackoverflow.com (Unified Search) checkbox.

Check this box to search your private site and the public site at the same time. To return to searching your private content only, uncheck the box.

Unified Search results show your private Stack Overflow for Teams content above that of the Stack Overflow public site. Public site results appear under the "Stack Overflow" heading and are read-only. Click any public post title to view that post on stackoverflow.com.

Unified Search on Stack Overflow for Teams Enterprise

Users on Stack Oveflow for Teams Enterprise (SOE) sites with Private Teams enabled have a second way to search the public Stack Overflow site. This feature works in tandem with the Unified Search checkbox. Find your plan.

On SOE with Private Teams, a pull-down menu to the left of the Search box offers selections for search scope. Here you can select one Private Team, Main Site, Public Stack Overflow, or All.

If you choose All, SOE will search your main site plus all Private Teams you're a part of. All does not include the public Stack Overflow site unless you also check the Include results from stackoverflow.com checkbox.

If you choose Public Stack Overflow in the search scope selector, you will search only stackoverflow.com and your site will automatically enable Include results from stackoverflow.com. You can't uncheck Include results from stackoverflow.com when searching the Public Stack Overflow site.

Unified Search update frequency

To preserve optimum site performance for all, we don't update Unified Search data in real-time. Instead, we update the search data multiple times a day. This means you may have to wait a short time for the latest Stack Overflow public site content to show up in your Unified Search results.

NOTE: For privacy and information security purposes, we don't log Unified Search requests of the public Stack Overflow site.


Need help? Submit an issue or question through our support portal.

Did this answer your question?