How to Search on Medium: Searching on Medium, Medium Searches
24 February 2023
updated article here or by clicking on title below!
Hooray, a Search function on Medium, I have found!
Found, a Medium search function to love!!
Since I started with Medium in November 2018, to read the company’s collections and anthologies, and of course, to read the wonderful writing of many Medium writers, I found the Search function lacking…..
At one point of time, one could click on a Tag Name and sort according to “Latest story” being the most recent story, but then…. that method or option disappeared. It was vexing to many of us that excellent new writers work could not be found because you couldn’t easily find the very latest / most recent published stories under Tags (or a Keyword search).
NOW, Medium has silently without any fanfare, slipped in a groovy shiny new Search facility. Hip hip hooray, I say.
After you click on the Magnifying glass at the top of your homepage, to search for something, by typing in a Keyword or Key-words, you will see a list of stories, arranged by who knows what order.
The list will consist of story titles with endless scrolling on a desktop PC version of Medium. A searcher can (as before the improvements) click on “People” or “Publications” or “Tags” to run searches upon those criteria.
The screenshot below shows the results of a Keyword search of “angels.”
On the right are Tag Names — related to Angels apparently. My guess is that each one of these Tag Names was used as a Tag Name in at least one of the stories appearing under the Keyword “angels.”
UPDATE: Tags were renamed Topics. It’s best to search under Topic Names.
I have no idea how the Tag Names under “Tags” when you click on “Tags” next to “Publications” get there. For the keyword search “Angels” they are different to the TAGS on the right. If you’re searching for angelic stories, it may be a good idea to click on the “Tags” alongside Stories / People / Publications…as well as to click on the Tag Names on the right that you’re interested in.
If you scroll down the Keyword search page, underneath the Tag Names you may see in the right-hand margin, People and Publications whose names include the word “angels”.
A story title or story content may have nothing at all do with angels, but if the writer’s or publication’s name has the word “angels” in it, the story will appear (somewhere) in the Keyword search results.
I assume that “Angels” or one or more of the Tag Names shown on the right were used as a Tag name for many articles/stories written by people whose names in the right-hand list under “People” do not have the word “Angel” in their name. If a Publication appears in this list but doesn’t have the word “Angel” in the Publication name, I assume that many stories written by the writers of that Publication, have been given the Tag name, “Angels.” 👼
Anyhow, the point is that you can click on a Tag Name, e.g. Angels, and voila, look what happens now!
UPDATE: 26 June 2021 ~~ I really wish Medium wouldn’t keep changing things so much. POPULAR is now replaced by HOT and TOP is now replaced by BEST, but for how long, who knows?? 😲
As at the date of this search, 3.4 thousand stories published on Medium had the Tag ANGELS written by 1.5 thousand different writers.
By default, the stories are arranged by most popular.
My guess is that the latest viewed or latest “interacted-with” stories are the ongoing “most popular” or “trending” stories (as perhaps are the stories on the initial Keyword Search page when one is not searching a Tag).
Popular writers used to be listed on the right.
But as at 3 June 2021, that label was changed to the label, Top writers.
I have NO idea how they became top writers, haha. I think I read somewhere on social media that if a writer publishes a huge number of stories on Medium using one Tag name, over a certain time-frame; that the Medium “algorithm” (computer programme) will delegate the writer with a “Top Writer” status, at some time, for at least a little while.
If you click on the little down-ward pointing arrow next to “Popular”, you will see choices of Latest and Top in addition to Popular!
Go to updated article by clicking on title below!
You beauty! LATEST is the search method that I was constantly craving since it was removed sometime in 2019, yay. 😆 What was lost, has now been restored.
A searcher can endlessly scroll down the page of “Latest” stories to delight upon the titles of stories with the Tag Name of their choice, to choose some to read. Previously one had to “drill down” by clicking on a Tag Name, then on a Year, then on a Month, then on a Day…and by the time you had found a story beguiling enough to read, well, your reading day would probably be over.
TOP STORIES — see above: click next to the default “Popular” search criteria/results & click on “Top”
Lookee here! 😃
If you click on “Top” in the list of categories of story titles to peruse, the default time-frame alongside “Top” is “This year” as shown above.
Click on the little down-ward pointing arrow next to “This year” and you can choose from “This week” or “This month” or “All time” as well as “This year.”
The thing is that probably only the Medium programmers know how stories are retrieved for the status of top stories, over any time-frame.
My guess is that a combination of number of claps and number of comments and number of views, and recent views, goes into the algorithm to decide upon a Story claiming a top spot!
3 June 2021 Update:
I have just discovered, joy oh joy, that Medium has added a link -
“Visit the archive”
It is at the bottom right-hand side under “Top Writers”. So now you can look for a story, with a certain Tag Name, that was published in a particular year.
Clicking on this link takes you to the old Search function, where the top 10 stories for a tag are shown. To find stories published over an entire month, you have to click on the Year / then on the Month name / then on every day of the month. 😲
Did you know: you can create your own Tag Name? You don’t have to use an existing Tag Name.
These changes make me think that using and creating unique Tag Names will be of increasing importance to Medium writers.
For example, if you search upon “curation tips” as a Keyword phrase after clicking on the magnifying glass, under “Popular” you will find 3 stories, which are all in one of my Publications, “Curation Matters.”
Maybe 3 stories only, over all-time, with the Tag Name “curation tips” is as low as low can get, but the creativity is in a story having a unique Tag Name which MAYBE some people new to Medium (or even well-established Medium members) may think about searching upon.
And if she does, well then, your stories will be found as they won’t have the competition of hundreds or thousands of other stories with the same Tag Name, because your stories use a really unique Tag Name. The trick is to try out Tag Names which you think readers may search upon!
And last, but not least, I’ll leave you with a screenshot taken on 9th April 2021. It shows one of my stories in Illumination as the second top popular story, upon clicking on the Tag Name “followers.”
I know the Popular stories will change from day to day or week to week, etc. but it’s nice for me seeing my Avatar under the number of Stories and Writers at the top-right.
I am 2nd from the left in the picture above. You may be able to see for yourself if you click right now on this search — ->https://medium.com/tag/followers .
