The #Ecency platform provides nice ways for its users to search for anything on the Hive blockchain through several versions of its search engine.
There are three versions of Ecency Search, which are the following:
Each version is described below. Two advantages and two drawbacks of each are also included.
Hivesearcher
 | Hivesearcher is the simplest Hive search engine among the three. It allows the user to search on the Hive blockchain for a word or a set of words among all the posts (called "documents" within Hivesearcher). (link to page) |
Advantages
- Clean and simple. The interface is easy to use, with nothing but text, a search box, and a search button on the homepage.
- Fast. Since it searches only posts, it returns results as fast as within 0.05 seconds.
Drawbacks
- Can search only posts. Comments, users, and communities on Hive are not (and cannot be) included on the search results.
- Cannot filter by author or tags. If a user wants to view only the posts of a specific author or specific tag, then Hivesearcher won't be able to help.
Main search
 | The Ecency main search interface is rich in features where users can specify the author, type of content (post or comment), category (which basically is an extension of the search query), content tags, date limit (week, month, year, or all), sort (whether by date published, relevance to search query, or total vote value). (link to page) |
Advantages
- Thorough search results. The results not only show the posts and comments that contain the search term(s), but also Hive users (based on their Hive profile) and Hive communities (based on their description).
- Latest updates. Since it is the main search platform of Ecency, any new search feature developed by the Ecency dev team quickly gets implemented there.
Drawbacks
- Minor new technical issues. There are minor technical issues (such as the Date filter display getting stuck at "Last Month", though the actual value changes when another option is selected) because new features take time to test.
- Possibly too much information on the search results page. If a user simply wants to search for a particular post, then there would be no need for users, communities, and topics displayed at the right side of the page.
Legacy search
 | The Ecency legacy search interface is an old, somewhat stable version of the main Ecency search interface. It has the same search filters compared to the main, but the results are limited to posts and comments. (link to page) |
Advantages
- Shows posts and comments as intended. Searching for content shows only posts and/or comments (depending on selected content type before searching), not including Hive accounts and communities which the user may not be interested in.
- More stable. Since it doesn't get new features because it is a legacy version, it doesn't inherit the bugs present on newer versions.
Drawbacks
- Minor old technical issues. There are minor technical issues (such as the smaller search field at the top suddenly popping up when typing a search term on the main search box) that might no longer be fixed because of no updates.
- Possibly too much white space. Compared to the main search, the search results on legacy search have a lot of white space in between, which can be filled either by compressing the page or adding more text on each search result.
Other
- #PeakD has its own search interface similar to Ecency main search.
- #HiveBlog also has its own search interface very similar to Hivesearcher.
- Tagging some Hive users who recently replied under my previous posts. @tydynrain @borniet @nathalie-s @jmis101 @rzc24-nftbbg @pepetoken @kenny-crane @astym @iceledy @caelum1infernum @astramar @svanbo