What a watch is#
A watch is a saved search the portal keeps re-running for you. Use Watch this search on Search, or Watch this question beneath an Ask answer, and the query is saved as a watch. The button changes to Watching so you can see the search is already covered; watching the same query twice keeps one watch, not two.
The daily re-check and the dot#
Once a day the portal re-runs every watch against the knowledge box and compares the top results with those from the last run. The first run only sets the baseline. When a later run finds that the results have changed - new documents have been ingested, or the ranking has moved - the watch is flagged.
The flag is a small accent-coloured dot on the watch's chip in the Saved strip at the top of Search (screen readers hear "has new results"). Open the watch to see the current results; that clears the dot until the next change. There is no email or push notification - the portal tells you the next time you look.
Where the list lives#
Your watches appear as chips in the Saved strip above the results on Search. Choose a chip to run that search again, or its cross to remove the watch. A watch saved from an Ask answer appears in the same strip, since it is the question text that is watched.
Per browser, not per account#
Watches belong to the browser you created them in, not to a sign-in, so the same portal opened on another device or in a private window starts with an empty strip. Clearing site data for the portal forgets your watches. Each browser can hold up to fifty watches per portal; the oldest is dropped when a new one would exceed that.