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layout: markdown_page
title: "Category Direction - Global Search"
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## Search

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Section | [Enablement](/direction/enablement/) |
| Content Last Reviewed | `2020-03-19` |

### Introduction and how you can help
<!-- Introduce yourself and the category. Use this as an opportunity to point users to the right places for contributing and collaborating with you as the PM -->

Thanks for visiting this direction page on Global Search in GitLab. This page belongs to the [Global Search](/handbook/product/categories/#global-search-group) group of the Enablement stage and is maintained by Kai Armstrong([E-Mail](mailto:karmstrong@gitlab.com)).

This strategy is a work in progress, and everyone can contribute:

 - Please comment and contribute in the linked [issues](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name[]=Category%3ASearch) and [epics](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name[]=Category%3ASearch) on this page. Sharing your feedback directly on GitLab.com or submitting a Merge Request to this page are the best ways to contribute to our direction.
 - Please share feedback directly via email, Twitter, or on a video call. If you're a GitLab user and have direct knowledge of your need for search, we'd especially love to hear from you.

### Overview
<!-- A good description of what your category is. If there are special considerations for your strategy or how you plan to prioritize, the description is a great place to include it. Please include use cases, personas, and user journeys into this section. -->

GitLab currently supports [Advanced Global Search](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/search/advanced_global_search.html) for Self-Managed instances. This provides users with a faster and more complete search across the GitLab instance and within the code. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to bring these features to GitLab.com users. Our goal is to bring this search experience to more users of GitLab.com as we continue to expand our usage inside of our organization and beyond.

One of the primary benefits of continuing to expand our Advanced Global Search to Gitlab.com is the ability to provide cross project code search to users of GitLab.com. By enabling cross project searching users will be better equipped to discover solutions in other parts of their own organization that might be solving or thinking about the same things they are.

We've also written a [blog post](/blog/2019/03/20/enabling-global-search-elasticsearch-gitlab-com/) on the lessons from our journey as we continue to work towards enabling Advanced Global Search on GitLab.com. A [follow up post](/releases/2019/07/16/elasticsearch-update/) was written on some things as we've continued to learn and enable things for GitLab.com.

### Target Audience and Experience
<!-- An overview of the personas (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas#user-personas) involved in this category. An overview
of the evolving user journeys as the category progresses through minimal, viable, complete and lovable maturity levels.-->

Advanced Global Search is targeted at all personas who might use GitLab. However, the largest benefits come to users performing cross-project code search looking for innersourcing opportunities or exploring the breadth of public projects across GitLab.com.

#### Challenges to address

Scaling a service as large as Advanced Global Search across all of GitLab.com is a complex problem. On top of the infrastructure challenge to address with this, there are also scaling issues associated with how the index is kept up to date.

### Maturity

Currently, GitLab's maturity for Search is _viable_. Here's why:

 - GitLab's current Advanced Global Search experience works for some self-managed instances and the experience of getting started has continued to improve. However, GitLab.com doesn't have the same search capabilities for all users of the product.

A complete Advanced Global Search feature brings this experience to all users of GitLab.com. Search is a fundamentally important feature in a users experience across GitLab and all users should have the benefits for this to be considered complete. This also brings a secure and scalable feature to match the needs of GitLab.com.

### What's Next & Why
<!-- This is almost always sourced from the following sections, which describe top priorities for a few stakeholders. This section must provide a link to an issue or [epic](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/product-management/process/#epics-for-a-single-iteration) for the MVC or first/next iteration in the category.-->

**In Progress: [Enable Advanced Global Search for Paid Groups on GitLab.com](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1736)** - Now that Advanced Global Search has been enabled for the `gitlab-org` and `gitlab-com` groups on GitLab.com we're focusing on how to continue enabling Advanced Global Search for Paid groups on GitLab.com. This is an important next step in expanding the scale of our Advanced Global Search deployment and further support our [dogfooding](/handbook/values/#dogfooding) principles.

**Next: [Advanced Global Search admin controls](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/428)** - Previously work on this effort began to bring additional administration controls and functionality to GitLab. While efforts have been re-prioritized to continue testing Advanced Global Search with new groups, improvements to the Administration of Advanced Global Search will need to happen to help support additional scaling efforts.

**Future: [Get Advanced Global Search working on GitLab.com](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153)** - Once we've enabled Advanced Global Search for Paid Groups on GitLab.com we'll continue to explore bringing these features to the rest of GitLab.com. Making code search work is an important feature and we understand the need and value this will provide.

### What is Not Planned right now

Currently there is not a plan to scale beyond the needs of Paid Groups on GitLab.com. This means that while the ambition of the Search Group is to expand Advanced Global Search to all users of GitLab, we're not yet ready to move in that direction.

The search group is also not focused on expanding the use of Advanced Global Search to other search areas beyond Global Search. While areas like Issue and Epic search could benefit from some of the features available, those areas are not in scope at this time.

### Competitive Landscape
<!-- The top two or three competitors, and what the next one or two items we should work on to displace the competitor at customers, ideally discovered through
[customer meetings](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/product-management/process/#customer-meetings). We’re not aiming for feature parity with competitors, and we’re not just looking at the features competitors talk about, but we’re talking with customers about what they actually use, and ultimately what they need.-->

Both GitHub and BitBucket provide a more comprehensive and complete search for users; particularly in their ability to deeply search code and surface those results to users. While GitLab's Advanced Global Search is available to self-managed users it hasn't reached all users across GitLab.com.

<!-- ### Analyst Landscape -->
<!-- What analysts and/or thought leaders in the space talking about, what are one or two issues that will help us stay relevant from their perspective.-->

<!-- ### Top Customer Success/Sales issue(s) -->
<!-- These can be sourced from the CS/Sales top issue labels when available, internal surveys, or from your conversations with them.-->

### Top user issue(s)
<!-- This is probably the top popular issue from the category (i.e. the one with the most thumbs-up), but you may have a different item coming out of customer calls.-->

- [Get Advanced Global Search working on GitLab.com](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153)

### Top internal customer issue(s)
<!-- These are sourced from internal customers wanting to [dogfood](/handbook/values/#dogfooding)
the product.-->

- [Get Advanced Global Search working on GitLab.com](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153)

### Top Strategy Item(s)
<!-- What's the most important thing to move your vision forward?-->

- [Get Advanced Global Search working on GitLab.com](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153)