diff --git a/docs/reference/search/request/scroll.asciidoc b/docs/reference/search/request/scroll.asciidoc index d7205228f7517..7fd0dd46cbc6f 100644 --- a/docs/reference/search/request/scroll.asciidoc +++ b/docs/reference/search/request/scroll.asciidoc @@ -109,7 +109,9 @@ request) tells Elasticsearch how long it should keep the search context alive. Its value (e.g. `1m`, see <>) does not need to be long enough to process all data -- it just needs to be long enough to process the previous batch of results. Each `scroll` request (with the `scroll` parameter) sets a -new expiry time. +new expiry time. If a `scroll` request doesn't pass in the `scroll` +parameter, then the search context will be freed as part of _that_ `scroll` +request. Normally, the background merge process optimizes the index by merging together smaller segments to create new bigger segments, at