Any unwanted snippet/excerpt/context-of-match lines processed seems like a waste of resources of various kinds. For indexed searches titles-only search result, with zero extra post processing (no page ranking, no snippet, no highlighting, no page info, the only significant //server processing// is the snippetno parenthetical saying it matched the category or the redirect or the section) seems like an attractive, so offering "no snippets" is a win-winwin-win feature.
Times when snippets are unwanted (for other types of resource savings) include:he old search depended on page ranking, offering only intitle and incategory for parameters, and pouring out myriad results. Now we have many new Search features which eschew page-ranking, enabling us to finally target a specific set of pages with precision for the purpose of definitely handling each and every one.
Providing this would encourage:
* post-processing those pages, targeting those titles in AWB
- "researchers" just want a count of certain pages, e.g. like a template developer using hastemplate:. This is like how although a personal medical doctor, a social worker, or a police officer may be interested in the "content" of your life, a psychologist or sociologist or politician can't afford to care about any one person* presenting those titles elsewhere, since they are only focused on "the way things are trending".adding markup for wikilinks or checklists
- "offline processors" just want a list of titles,* comparing one query to another. (AWB + database, text processing of sA quick diff or cmp helps learn Search results page text, diagnose Search, etc.)develop Search documentation
Other attractions are
- when* five times more results per page are wantedinformation per page
- when //only* clean, relevant info// is wantedant, i.e. when cleanuncluttered results are wanted
- to hide errors when matching icompete with SpecialPages in general, PrefixIndex, WhatLinksHere, Categories incorrect particular
- to make consistent look and feel to* an intitle search with titles only
I realize that the report when some regexp terms show snippets and some don'tend-user who are post-processing can do it themselves.
- for slow or low bandwidth terminalsBut currently there is no obvious way to grep titles from Search results.
- for printouts of search results to use as checklists(Personally I have [javaScript add an edit tag](//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cpiral/global.js) to each title, and can grep on that.)
Later maybe evolve "excerpt lines" from zero to some number. How about //titlesonly:// or #0 as the query term to signal "no snippets"?Currently the end user must do the search, go to the bottom of the page and select a higher number of results (than the twenty), have the search done again, and then undo 1) the snippet 2) the document size and date (or category member counts), and 3) the parenthetical saying whether it matched in a category box, or matched in a redirect.
Removing or not removing document size and document date info from the search results page doesn't seem nearly as relevant.