Search

Notion's over reliance on search compounds with their search shortcomings.

Though Notion relies heavily on search, it has a number of key limitations that can make it quite difficult to use. This is not a comprehensive list, but should highlight a number of reasons why over reliance on imperfect search as your primary discovery mechanism can cause problems.

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Notion only searches the first part of each page⁠

(and the first part of each of the blocks in that first part of the page). This means is can be tremendously hard or impossible to find what you are looking for.

Notion only shows one matching result per page, so you are all but guaranteed to need to use cmd/ctrl-f in conjunction with native search.

Notion provides limited previews of search matches, making it very hard to know if you’ve found the right content.

Database search in Notion (the search box at the top of a database) does not search the content of the pages contained in the database, only the properties of those rows/pages.

Notion’s universal search runs entirely on the server, so if you are offline, you can’t search at all. In Coda, search within docs works while offline.

Often, in large workspaces, scoped search (meaning searching a specific table or doc) is actually preferable to universal/global search as you can restrict the number of possible matches found.

With large workspaces, search is also known to slow down dramatically in Notion.

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`Ease of use The niceties and annoyances of everyday use.`⁠

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⁠⁠⁠Ease of useThe niceties and annoyances of everyday use.⁠

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`Ease of use The niceties and annoyances of everyday use.`⁠