Lyris automatically indexes all mailing list messages, so search results are returned very quickly. The user can choose between searching for all the given words, or any of the given words. If there are multiple hits, messages with the most matching messages will be displayed first. If there are messages with an equal number of matching words, the messages will be ordered by date, with the most recent messages first. The user can choose to have Lyris look for the search words anywhere in the message, just in the message header, or just in the message body.
Punctuation is filtered out, and understood as a word separator.
Non-English language characters are indexed correctly. The Lyris search engine is not English-language dependent. New messages begin to be indexed 15 seconds after they are created. However, the Lyris Indexing process operates as the lowest priority task, and is only operative while the Lyris Server is idle. Unless a Lyris Server is extremely busy, there is likely to be enough idle time for a new message to be indexed within a few minutes.