Search
Search lets members find sermons, articles, devotionals, videos, events, and searchable website pages by typing a few words — results appear as they type.
How it works
Apollos keeps searchable material ready for your church and updates it after content is published or synced. Each church has its own private search results, so members only ever see your church's content.
Search handles the hard parts automatically:
- Relevance ranking — the best matches come first.
- Typo tolerance — "sermin" still finds "sermon."
- Partial matching — members don't need the exact full title.
- Meaning-based matches — related language can help members find the right item even when they do not type the exact words from the title.
- Answers drawn from your content — where available, search can summarize an answer from your church's own matching content and still show the items it came from.
- Trending discovery — when a member has not entered a query, or no results match, search can show currently trending content to help them keep exploring.
A few behaviors worth knowing:
- New content isn't searchable instantly. Search updates after content is published or synced, so there can be a short delay before brand-new content or meaning-based matches appear. Existing content is refreshed so older items can gain meaning-based matches too.
- Website pages can be searched too. On the Max plan, Apollos can follow public links on your church website and include those pages alongside app content and events, even when the site has no sitemap. Changed pages are refreshed so results do not stay stale. See Website embeds.
- Search fails quietly, never loudly. If something goes wrong behind the scenes, members see fewer (or no) results — the app itself never breaks.
- Tags help. Tagged content surfaces on tag matches too, making it easier for members to find relevant content. See Personalization: tags & audiences.
Make your content easy to find
Search quality depends mostly on your content's own words. When creating content:
- Write clear, descriptive titles — "Finding Peace in Anxiety — Philippians 4" beats "Week 3."
- Always fill in the summary — it's searched along with the title and gives search more to match on.
- Tag by topic — tags improve discovery for members browsing and searching by theme.
See Create, edit, publish & unpublish content for where these fields live.
Troubleshooting
Why does search return no results at all?
First, try a broad, common term like "love" or a recent sermon title. If a broad term works, the original query simply had no matches. If nothing returns results at all, search may not be fully set up for your church yet, or it may need a fresh update — contact Apollos support and we'll get it configured.
Why isn't my new content showing in search?
Search updates on a schedule, so newly published content can take a little while to become searchable. If content still isn't searchable well after publishing, confirm it's published and not expired (see Content troubleshooting), then contact Apollos support — search may need a refresh.
Why does a search result lead to missing content?
That content was deleted after it was made searchable. The app handles this gracefully — the dead result is simply skipped and everything else works — but the stale entry may keep appearing until search updates again. If it lingers, contact Apollos support to refresh search.
Why are search results poor or oddly ranked?
Check the content first: vague titles and empty summaries give search little to work with. If well-titled content still ranks badly, contact Apollos support — ranking can be tuned.
Why is search slow?
Occasional slowness usually resolves on its own. If search is consistently slow for your members, report it to Apollos support with a couple of example queries and roughly when it happened.