> ## Knowledge Base Index
> Fetch the complete knowledge base index at: https://support.koala.sh/sitemap.xml
> Use this file to discover available pages before exploring further.
> Pure-Markdown content can be obtained by appending a '.md' suffix to the content URLs listed in the sitemap (without the trailing slash).

# Custom Search in KoalaWriter

Custom Search adds filtering capabilities to our real-time data feature. You can now filter sources based on your specific needs, allowing you to only get data from and cite sources based on your criteria.

![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/b/3/9/5/b395860c9336b00/image_1pbvnnt.png)

Want to only cite domains with a Domain Authority over 80? No problem. What about only gov and edu domains? Yep! Even sources that are only available on Google Scholar such as research papers? Don't worry, we got you ;)  

## Using Custom Search

When Custom Search is selected, you can put in your own search operators. The only supported operators are **site**, **filetype**, and **da**.

*   The **site** operator can be used to specifically include or exclude individual sites or entire TLDs. For example, *site:example.com* will only include sources from example.com, while *-site:example.com* will not include sources from example.com.
*   The **filetype** operator is used for filtering by the file types. For example, *filetype:pdf* will only include PDFs, while *-filetype:pdf* will not include any PDFs. [Here is a full list of filetypes](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/indexable-file-types) that you should be able to get results for.
*   The **da** operator is used to filter by the site’s Domain Authority score. For example, *da:80* only matches sites with a Domain Authority of 80 or higher, while *da:20-60* matches sites with a Domain Authority of 20 through 60. If you want to show sites with a DA below 50 you could do *da:0-50*.

Not sure what Domain Authority a site has? You can use the **/da url** command in [KoalaChat](https://koala.sh/chat) to check:

![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/ba0ab0c7d1b54800/00437652-cd29-498c-9756-af26df_13vp4bl.png)

### Combining Filters

There are some important things to keep in mind if you want to use more than one filter at once.

To use the same filter type you must use the word "OR" between the operators. You should not use "OR" between *different* search operators.

Also, **the da filter can only be used once in your custom search operators**.

**This is okay:**

*   **site:gov filetype:pdf**: Will only match PDFs on government websites
*   **site:gov OR site:edu filetype:pdf**: Will only match PDFs on government OR educational sites
*   **filetype:PDF OR filetype:xls OR filetype:xlsx**: Will only match PDFs or Excel documents

**This is not okay:**

*   **site:gov site:edu**: A site cannot be a .gov at the same time, so this will not match anything
*   **filetype:pdf filetype:xls**: A page cannot be a PDF and an Excel document at the same time
*   **da:0-20 OR da:80**: You can only use the **da** filter once

We do not support all of the functionality that Google Search supports but you could test your custom search operators with Google Search to make sure you are getting any results. Also keep in mind Google Search does not support our custom **da** filter so don't use that when testing on Google.

Also, **do not** try to do nested logic by using parenthesis such as *(filetype:xls site:gov) OR (filetype:pdf site:edu)* because **this will not work**.

### Notes About the “da” Filter

The **da** filter matches domains after the search results have been returned. So if there are not enough results that match the **da** filter within the top ~30 search results, then it could result in no real-time data being used. As a result, you should not set filters that are too strict.

For example, I would probably not recommend filtering by da:0-20 since not many sites below 20 Domain Authority will be at the top of the SERPs for a lot of queries. You might try da:0-50 instead to make sure you still get some real-time data without including any high Domain Authority sites.

It should also be noted that the Domain Authority will be cached for up to 90 days.

Domain Authority is powered by [Moz](https://moz.com).