HomeGuru CommunityProduct TrainingTemplatesContact SupportDeveloper Network
Guides

Searching for Knowledge in Guru

Guru goes beyond basic keyword search with semantic search, powered by AI and machine learning. This helps Guru understand the meaning behind search terms, rather than just matching keywords. Guru also learns from your team’s past searches to improve result rankings over time.

Suggest Edits

Using Guru's search to locate information

Guru uses a default Knowledge Agent named Guru in the search bar. This Agent pulls results from all accessible Collections and connected Sources.

Admins can create additional Knowledge Agents to customize search behavior. If your workspace uses multiple Agents, you can choose one from the dropdown in the web app or browser extension.

Knowledge Agent dropdown

What happens when you search

  1. If your plan includes Answers, Guru will use generative AI to provide a direct answer.
  2. Guru surfaces results from:
  3. Clicking a result opens the Card or external page. You’ll only see content you have permission to access.

Filtering results

You can filter search results by:

  • Source
  • Guru attributes:
    • Collection
    • Author
    • Tag
    • Verification status
    • Favorites

💡

Tip

Use the # or ! commands in the search bar to quickly filter by Tag or Collection.

How Guru search works

Guru’s search engine includes a range of intelligent processes to help you find what you need—even if you don’t search with exact terms.

Interpreting search terms

  • Recognizes alternate forms: e.g., "ran" → "run", "running"
  • Ignores stop words: "a", "the", "is", etc.
  • Applies spell check (fuzzy matching)
  • Evaluates punctuation and spacing: e.g., "self service" vs "self-service"
  • Considers synonyms: e.g., "vacation" may match "holiday"
  • Respects exact match searches using double quotes:
    • "engineering onboarding" will only find Cards with that exact phrase
    • Stop words inside quotes are excluded from exact matching
  • Uses machine learning (ML) to understand the meaning of terms—this is Guru’s semantic search capability

Gathering relevant results

Guru ranks results based on:

  • Location of matches: title, tags, content, attachments
  • Match count and semantic similarity
  • Card activity:
    • Views, favorites, copies
    • Recent activity weighs more than older activity
  • Card age: newer Cards may rank higher

Guru’s ML model also learns which Cards helped users with similar searches in the past—boosting relevance over time.

Title search

Guru also supports a fast, title-only search for quick access to familiar content. When typing in the search bar, the first three dropdown suggestions are based only on Card titles.

Title search dropdown

This search uses:

  • Alternate forms of search terms
  • Match strength across multiple title words
  • Recent activity and Card age
  • Exact matches (as in regular search)

✍️

Note

Title search does not use semantic ML or spellcheck.

How Guru builds its search index

When a Card is created or updated, Guru extracts and indexes the following:

  • Card title
  • Card body
  • Tags
  • Text from attachments (e.g., PDFs)
  • Attachment file names
  • A machine-learned representation of the Card’s meaning

This index is usually updated within seconds of publishing. Attachment content may take up to 1–2 minutes to finish processing.

How text is extracted from attachments

Guru uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and machine learning to identify text in uploaded files—even handwritten text.

Supported file types:

  • PDF
  • Word and PowerPoint (and open-source equivalents)
  • Excel
  • Plain text (.txt)
  • PNG
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • Postscript

File limitations:

  • Max size: 500MB (10MB for PNGs)
  • Max: 3,000 pages per file
  • Max dimensions: 40 inches / 2880 points
  • PDF must not be password protected
  • JPEG 2000 PDFs not supported
  • Text must be horizontal, ≥15pt at 150 DPI (~8pt font)

💡

Tip

Since matches in attachments are weighted lower than those in the Card body, always include a description in the Card for better results.

OCR-supported languages:

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Portuguese
  • Spanish

Frequently asked questions about search in Guru

Why can’t I find a specific Card?

You may not have access to the Card’s Collection or folder. Contact your Guru admin to request access.

👀

Want a closer look at some key Guru features and best practices?

Check out our events page for demos, workshops, new release roundups, Getting Started bootcamp, guest panelists and more! For upcoming live events and a library of past recordings: Click here to register

Updated 4 days ago