# Search PublicWWW searches the source code of web pages, not only the text visitors see. A query is the fragment of markup, script, stylesheet or text you expect to find - a tracker id, a library filename, a meta tag, an affiliate code or a phrase from the page. ## What a search goes through By default a search covers the home pages of websites; `depth:` reaches their indexed internal pages - see [Operators](https://publicwww.com/docs/query-syntax/operators/). ## Response headers Not only the page source is searched, but also the HTTP headers the server sent with the page - `Server`, `X-Powered-By` and the like, written as `name: value`. `"server: cloudflare"` (https://publicwww.com/websites/%22server%3A+cloudflare%22/) ## In what order Results come in order of popularity rank, the most popular websites first. `like:` puts them in order of similarity instead. ## Websites by topic To find websites by what they are about rather than by their code, search with `like:"words"`, in any language, or with `like:example.com` for websites like a given one - the most similar first. See [Websites by topic](https://publicwww.com/docs/query-syntax/like/). ## Which characters are searched Only the Latin letters `a-z`, the digits `0-9` and the underscore `_` are searched. Every other character works like a space - punctuation, accented letters, and the letters of other alphabets: Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Chinese and the rest. Words written in other alphabets are therefore moved into `like:"..."` automatically: similarity search takes words in any language and alphabet and finds websites about that topic - see [Websites by topic](https://publicwww.com/docs/query-syntax/like/). To match the code itself, look for the Latin traces a page carries - a transliterated word, the language in the `` tag, the country domain. More in [Languages](https://publicwww.com/docs/languages/). ## The count above the results It counts websites: one row is one website - its home page, or with `depth:N` its page N. With `depth:all` it counts pages, and a website can give several. A plain number is exact. `1,000,000+` means the search stopped counting at a million - there are more. `of about N` means the search ran out of time before it went through the whole index, as a guest's search can, and N is an estimate of the total. The count is what the index holds, not what your plan shows: rows hidden on your plan - masked names with *Sign up to view* or *Upgrade to view* - are counted too, and so are the rows past those a search may return. A cluster made from `depth:all` results keeps each domain once. ## Pages of results A page shows 20 results. Without signing in, only the first page opens: the numbers after it are inactive, and the note next to them links to a free sign-up. A free account opens the first 50 pages (1,000 results); the pages after them open on the [paid plans](https://publicwww.com/prices.html). A download takes as many rows as your plan opens - see [Downloading results](https://publicwww.com/docs/search/downloads/). Rows also open only down to a place in the popularity ranking: the top 1,000,000 websites without signing in, the top 3,000,000 on a free account and the whole index on the paid plans - a paid account that has spent the day's searches sees the free depth until the reset. A row past that place shows *Sign up to view* or *Upgrade to view* instead of the website, and the count includes it. ## In this section - [Signatures](https://publicwww.com/docs/search/signatures/) - the code a product leaves on its customers' websites, and how to turn it into a query. - [Product traces](https://publicwww.com/docs/search/traces/) - the kinds of code to look for, from the most reliable to the least. - [Checking a signature](https://publicwww.com/docs/search/checking/) - what a query finds, what does not belong, and what its number counts. - [Build signatures](https://publicwww.com/docs/search/build-signatures/) - give a list of websites, get code that finds more websites like them. - [Downloading results](https://publicwww.com/docs/search/downloads/) - the URLs, CSV and CSV+snippets files: format, separators, how many rows. ## Where to go next - [Query Syntax](https://publicwww.com/docs/query-syntax/) - every operator and modifier, one line each. - [Technologies](https://publicwww.com/docs/examples/) - ready-made queries by topic. - [Clusters](https://publicwww.com/docs/clusters/) - keep and compare sets of results, and read fields off every site in them. - [API](https://publicwww.com/docs/api/) - the same searches from your own code. Source: https://publicwww.com/docs/search/