The Tracksies > Fetchie > Settings tab is deliberately small — a strictness dial, a couple of numbers, and a few toggles. This page walks through each one. (Choosing what gets indexed lives on the Index tab, next to the rebuild button — see The search index.)
—
Match Strictness
The one dial that changes how searching feels. Three modes:
- Exact — every word must match, whole words only. Searching “blue linen shirt” only returns pages containing all three words. Precise, and unforgiving of typos and plurals.
- Balanced — strict when it can be; widens automatically when results are thin. Fetchie first requires every word, and if that finds fewer than a handful of results, it quietly re-runs the search accepting any of the words. Visitors get precision when your content supports it and options when it doesn’t. This is the default, and the recommended setting for most sites.
- Broad — any word matches, including partial words. “shirt” matches “shirts”, “hood” matches “hoodie”, and a half-typed word still finds things. The friendliest mode for stores with lots of near-miss searches, at the cost of some looser results.
Ranking works the same in every mode — pages matching more of the words still rise to the top — so Broad doesn’t mean chaotic, just generous.
—
Results Per Page
How many results each page of the results list shows. Default 10, adjustable from 1 to 50. Fetchie fetches up to 50 best matches per search in total; this setting just controls how they’re paged.
—
Not On This Tab: Retention and the Digest
Two settings people look for here live on the Insights tab instead, next to the report they belong to:
- Keep entries for — how long search log entries are kept: 30, 90 or 365 days. See Privacy.
- Digest recipient and How often — who the search summary email goes to, and whether it arrives weekly, fortnightly or monthly. See The digest email.
The digest’s on/off switch is somewhere else again: Tracksies > Settings > Features, on the Fetchie tile.
—
Floating Search Position & Edge Offset
These two settings position the floating search button, and only apply when that feature is switched on. They’re covered properly in The floating search button.
—
Extra Passages
When a page matches your visitor’s words in more than one place, Fetchie can show the extra passages beneath the main snippet, each one its own jump link. Choose how many appear: none, one, or two.
Two suits documentation and long policy pages, where a page genuinely answers several things. None keeps a product-heavy results page tight.
—
On Uninstall
Keep the search index and settings if Fetchie is uninstalled — on by default.
This only matters if you ever delete Fetchie from the Plugins screen (deactivating never touches your data). With the toggle on, the index, search log and settings survive an uninstall, so a reinstall picks up right where you left off — no rebuild, no reconfiguration. Switch it off first if you want an uninstall to remove every Fetchie table and option from your database.
—
Results Appearance
The Results appearance section further down the same tab — results layout and breadcrumb style — has its own page.
—
Related
- How search results work — what the strictness modes feel like to a visitor
- Insights — what the search log powers
- Privacy — exactly what the log stores