Pokémon Go: Search terms that will up your game

Pokémon Go has several official search terms that can help you navigate your massive Pokémon collection. Here’s all of them!

When you take the motto “gotta catch ’em all” to heart, sorting through your massive collection of Pokémon can be a real challenge. Even for the most diligent of players, it can be overwhelming sorting through up to 2,500 different Pokémon. Fortunately, Niantic has implemented some helpful tools to do that job just a little easier. While some of these terms are fairly obvious, such as the name of a species of Pokémon, many of these terms are not as well-known. We, here at iMore, are going to take the guesswork out of Search Terms.

How do I use Search Terms?

All Pokémon Go Search Terms work in basically the same manner.

1. Click on the Poké Ball to open your Main Menu.
2. Select Pokémon.
3. Click on the Maginifying Glass.
4. Type in the Search Term.
5. Voila! the specific Pokémon that fit your Search Term are the only ones displayed.

There are slight modifications made to some of the Search Terms, but they all work like this.

Do the Search Terms ever change?

Absolutely. With new Pokémon, new Generations, and more, Pokémon Go added new Search Terms periodically and will occasionally change the existing Search Terms to fit the players’ needs better. While these Search Terms are often unannounced, we’ll be sure to keep this list as up to date as possible, testing out each of the Search Terms ourselves and sharing them with you.

So what are all these Search Terms anyway?

While we will go into greater detail as we go along, here’s a quick cheat sheet of all the Search Term categories for those of you who already know how the terms work.

• Names
• Species
• Pokédex Numbers
• Types
• Weather
• Attack
• CP
• HP
• IVs
• Distance
• Alola
• Costume
• Defender
• Eggs Only
• Evolve
• Gender
• Galar
• Hatched
• Region
• Item
• Legendary
• Lucky
• Mythical
• Purified
• Shadow
• Shiny
• Traded

Modifiers

Another neat feature to the Search Terms is that the addition of certain punction marks can modify them, including colons (:), commas (,), semi-colons (;), ampersands (&), and exclamation marks (!). By using a colon, semi-colon, comma, or ampersand, you can connect multiple terms. For example, using the terms “4* & 150” will give you all Mewtwo with Perfect IVs. By using an exclamation point like “!evolve”, you remove anything from that Search Term from your results. Some other modifiers only work for specific terms like a plus sign (+) or a dash (-).

What’s your name?

The most common Search Term, and one you’ve almost certainly used, by typing in any part or all of a Pokémon’s name, you will only see Pokémon with that name. For players who give their favorite Pokémon nicknames, this can be a quick way to look them up. This is also a Search Term we rely on when doing mass evolutions for XP because you can rename every Pokémon you want to evolve and then sort by name.

You can also connect this Search Term with a comma, colon, semi-colon, or ampersand to search for more than one name at a time.

Who’s that Pokémon?

Similar to searching by name, if you haven’t given a Pokémon a Nickname, just searching its species will turn up every Pokémon of that species. So, type in “Pichu,” and you’ll see every Pichu you have. This search term can be modified with a plus sign (+) to show you all of a family tree. So, if you put in “+Whismur,” you’ll see all your Whismur, Loudres, and Exploud.

Likewise, if you type in a Pokémon’s national Pokédex number, it will also display only that species of Pokémon. The number cannot be modified with a plus sign; however, you can modify with a dash (-) to display all Pokémon within a certain range. For example, “150-152” would show you Mewtwo, Mew, and Chikorita.

Both can be connected to search for multiple species.

Type Match

Let’s say you’re going to take on a new Raid, and you know that Raid Boss is weak against Fire-type Pokémon. By searching “Fire,” you will see every Fire-type Pokémon you have. This works with each of the 18 types, which are:

• Normal
• Fire
• Fighting
• Water
• Flying
• Grass
• Poison
• Electric
• Ground
• Psychic
• Rock
• Ice
• Bug
• Dragon
• Ghost
• Dark
• **Steel
• Fairy

For connecting multiple types, if you use a comma, you can search for any Pokémon with either of the types you’ve searched for. However, if you connect two types with an ampersand, you will only see Pokémon that have both of those types.

Lovely weather we’re having

Another useful Search Term when preparing for a Raid, searching for @weather will only display Pokémon boosted by your current local weather conditions. This applies specifically to a Pokémon’s move types, not their base type, so if your Raichu happens to know the Fighting-type move Brick Break, it will come up during Cloudy weather, but your Raichu with Thunder Punch will only come up under Rainy weather.

Got the moves

Let’s say you want something more specific than just a Weather Boost; you want to know every Pokémon with a specific type attack or even a specific attack. By using @type or @attack, you can search for Pokémon with particular attacks or type attacks. These terms can be used for any type or attack in Pokémon Go and can be modified further with the numbers “1”, “2”, or “3” to indicate which attack you’re looking for, “move” for a secondary Charged Move, or “special” for Legacy Moves. Some examples of how these work are:

• @1Fire will show all Pokémon with a Fire-type Fast Move.
• @Special will show all Pokémon with Legacy Moves.
• @Move will show any Pokémon you’ve given a secondary Charged Move
• @2Rock & @3Fire will only show Pokémon with a Rock-type Charged Move and a Fire-type secondary Charged Move.

Crunching numbers

Arguably the most critical information a Pokémon has, base stats tell you a Pokémon’s potential usefulness in a fight. While CP and HP have always been visible on a Pokémon’s profile, the same cannot be said for IVs. Even with appraisals being simplified, unless you make a note of every Pokémon’s IVs after appraising, you’re probably not going to be able to tell just by looking at them. Fortunately, there are Search Terms for this too.

CP and HP both work the same, just add “CP” or “HP before the number you’re looking for. You can modify this by adding a dash between two numbers for a range. So CP100 will show any Pokémon whose CP is exactly 100; whereas, HP100-110 will show any Pokémon whose HP is between 100 and 110.

IVs are a little trickier in that you cannot search for the exact percentage. Still, the IV Search Terms are loads simpler to use than manually appraising each Pokémon and way less risky than using a third-party IV checker that can get your account banned. The Search Terms for IVs are “0“, “1“, “2“, “3“, and “4“. The first four represent ranges, 0 – 49%, 50– 65%, 66 – 80%, and 81 – 99% respectively. The most useful, however, is the “4” search term, which will only show you 100% IV Pokémon!

I would walk 500 miles

The Search Term for Distance will filter Pokémon based on the distance between where they were caught or where their Egg originated and where you are at the moment. This one can be useful for players going for the Pilot Medal, which is rewarded for trade Pokémon across far distances. To use this one, you either put in a range, like distance100-125, for all Pokémon caught from 100-125 meters from your current location, or with an open dash, like Distance15000- for anything 15,000 KM or further from your current location. Fun point of interest, that 15,000 KM from me would be this Alolan Sandslash I hatched from an Egg that a friend in Singapore sent me!

Gender

While this one is likely more useful in combination with other search terms, Female, Male, and GenderUnknown will filter their respective gendered Pokémon. While uncommon, there are some Pokémon whose evolution is determined by gender. For example, if you wanted to find Ralts that could evolve into Gardevoir, you would search Ralts & female, and only the female Ralts would show up; whereas for those who could evolve into Gallade, you would search Ralts & male.

Where in the world?

For the time being, each of the Pokémon world regions that have been released to Pokémon Go are also Search Terms. These include Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and Unova. However, two regions are currently being used as other Search Terms: Alola and Galar. Pokémon Go still hasn’t seen the Kalos Region with Generation VI, but due to the introduction of Regional Variants, these Search Terms can already be used. Either way, these Search Terms aren’t particularly useful on their own, given that smallest Generations still have over 70 Pokémon.

Shine on

If you’ve been playing Pokémon long enough, you have bound to come across a Pokémon that doesn’t look like the rest of its species. This could be as simple as the slight hue shift of a Shiny Pikachu or something as extreme as the difference between an Alolan Regional Exeggutor and the standard. Either way, these variant Pokémon versions can also be found with Search Terms. The Search Terms Shiny and Costume are both fairly self-explanatory, specifically displaying Shiny Variants and Pokémon wearing costumes (including all those Pikachu wearing hats!) The other two are for newer concepts: Regional Variants. If you’re not familiar with Regional Variants, this was a concept introduced in Gen VII’s Alola Region. These special Pokémon look drastically different from the original counterparts and even have different types. Although the Generations to feature Regional Variants have not made it to Pokémon Go yet, these specific Pokémon have been introduced early. Using either Alolan or Galarian, you can see these specific Variants.

Team Go Rocket

With the introduction of Team Go Rocket to Pokémon Go, players were introduced to Shadow Pokémon and the Purification process. Along with that came two new Search Terms: Shadow and Purified. These Search Terms can be especially useful when trying to complete the Looming in the Shadows Special Research, as it requires purifying many Shadow Pokémon each month.

I didn’t catch these

While most Pokémon in Pokémon Go are caught, some come from Eggs or Trades. There are Search Terms for these too. Hatched will show you only the Pokémon you hatched from Eggs, while the more specific Eggsonly will show you Pokémon that can only hatch from Eggs. Eggsonly used to be Baby, but we suspect Niantic changed it because of how many people use Baby in Pokémon nicknames. Likewise, if you got a Pokémon from a friend, you can use the Search Term Traded to see all of those, and the Search Term Lucky will show you those rare, special trades that go Lucky.

The very best

Above and beyond all other Pokémon are the Mythical Pokémon and Legendary Pokémon. These are Pokémon, who, in most every Pokémon game ever, are rare, often limited only to a single copy per game or to special events. These are some of the strongest Pokémon out there, and as such, they have Search Terms too. Very straight forward, you just type in Mythical or Legendary, and you’ll only see those specific categories.

I’d like to evolve these

Sometimes you’ll need to evolve a lot of Pokémon or very specific Pokémon for Research or Special Research. You can use the Search Term Evolve to see all Pokémon capable of evolving. This won’t show Pokémon you don’t have the candies or items to evolve either, so if you need to evolve ten Pokémon for Research, you can see everything you have the resources on hand to evolve without having to dig. Likewise, if a Pokémon needs an item to evolve, the Search Term Item will show you specifically Pokémon you can evolve right now with items and candies on hand.

Where’s my Pokémon?

One of the more useful Search Terms, Defender will show you any Pokémon you currently have in Gyms. This can be especially helpful if you need to give a Pokémon berries to keep it at a Gym but also have far too many Gym badges to sift through. For those who keep a lot of Pokémon at Gyms, this can also be a quick way to look through them to plan out getting the most Pokécoins each day.

Search Term questions or tips?

Have you found a new Search Term? Is one of the Search Terms not working for you? Do you have a cool idea for a new Search Term? Drop us a comment below, and be sure to check out our many other Pokémon Go Guides!

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