"Search help" link in search form is ambiguous and confusing

We still need to fix this...

I couldn't think of a good thing to change the link text to. So let's think about this a bit. If you click on the link, it takes you to a page that shows you the results of the getHelp() method on the applicable search page. The default (used by Node and Help search) is to return:

      'list' => [
        '#theme' => 'item_list',
        '#items' => [
          $this->t('Search looks for exact, case-insensitive keywords; keywords shorter than a minimum length are ignored.'),
          $this->t('Use upper-case OR to get more results. Example: cat OR dog (content contains either "cat" or "dog").'),
          $this->t('You can use upper-case AND to require all words, but this is the same as the default behavior. Example: cat AND dog (same as cat dog, content must contain both "cat" and "dog").'),
          $this->t('Use quotes to search for a phrase. Example: "the cat eats mice".'),
          $this->t('You can precede keywords by - to exclude them; you must still have at least one "positive" keyword. Example: cat -dog (content must contain cat and cannot contain dog).'),
        ],
     ]

and for User search, you get:

      'list' => [
        '#theme' => 'item_list',
        '#items' => [
          $this->t('User search looks for user names and partial user names. Example: mar would match usernames mar, delmar, and maryjane.'),
          $this->t('You can use * as a wildcard within your keyword. Example: m*r would match user names mar, delmar, and elementary.'),
        ],
      ],

So it is giving you help with the syntax of searching. How can we get this across in the link text, without using the phrase "Help search" (which makes us think we are searching for help)... Ideas:

a) Help with searching
b) How to search
c) Search syntax help
d) More about searching

Thoughts?

"Search tips" -- that's an interesting idea!

It made me think about the link for text format help, which I think used to be called "filter tips" a long time ago -- you see under a text-with-format field, such as the one in the Comment form on drupal.org. On drupal.org (which is Drupal 7), the link text is:

More information about text formats

and it has a help icon (looks like ) after it.

In Drupal 8, it looks like the text is "About text formats" (it is added in core/modules/filter/srce/Element/TextFormat), and I'm not sure if it has the help icon or not.

So maybe we should use this text, for consistency:

About searching

and see if we can get that help icon displayed after it to indicate it is a help link?

The ? icon is provided as a CSS background image, so I think it is most likely not accessible at all?

I'm not too sure about "How to search" actually (even though I suggested it)... The page it links to doesn't really tell you how to do a basic search (enter keywords and click the search button). It gives you some information about more advanced options (AND, OR, quotes, etc.). So I am not sure "how to search" is correct?

For reference, here is the page about standards for interface text in Drupal:
https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/user-interface-standards/interface-text

We discussed this in the Usability group meeting today
#3137865: Drupal Usability Meeting 2020-06-09

The consensus ideas:
- We should not start the link with the word "Search" because most of our links start with verbs, and that is the confusing part about this link when it is on the Search page.
- We want the link to be short.
- Putting the ? icon on the link would make the area busy -- the search button itself (in most themes) is already an icon
- The best link text is probably:

About searching

So, I think we can now make a patch!

Here's a patch that changes the link text and the resulting page title to "About searching".

I thought that the patch I made did rename the landing page. Not sure where the breadcrumbs come from...

That's odd. I thought that I searched the code for the string "Search help" and removed all instances. If not, the patch definitely needs work. Should figure out the breadcrumbs too, as they are weird to say the least.

I'm not actually sure where the breadcrumbs are coming from. I thought there was either a YML file or a class that would handle them, but I do not see either in the Search module. ???

Actually the breadcrumbs should be a separate issue. Not only that but the issue already exists:
#3027108: Search breadcrumbs have duplicate entry for Search in them

So, I'm going to set this back to Needs Review. The scope is only to change the title/link for the pages that give you help with searching. The breadcrumbs should be addressed on the other issue.