I am using grails searchable plugin to search my domain classes. However, I cannot yet search by my hasMany (skills and interests) fields even though they are of the simple type String. This is my domain class: class EmpactUser { static searchable = [except: ['dateCreated','password','enabled','accountExpired','accountLocked','passwordExpired']] String username String password boolean enabled = true boolean accountExpired boolean accountLocked boolean passwordExpired String email String firstName String lastName String address String phoneNumber String description byte[] avatar byte[] resume Date dateCreated static hasMany = [ skills : String, interests : String, // each user has the ability to list many skills and interests so that they can be matched with a project. ] static constraints = { username blank: false, unique: true password blank: false email email: true, blank: false firstName blank: false lastName blank: false description nullable: true address nullable: true avatar nullable: true, maxSize: 1024 * 1024 * 10 resume nullable: true, maxSize: 1024 * 1024 * 10 phoneNumber nullable: true, matches: "/[(][+]d{3}[)]d+/", maxSize: 30 } } This is the code I am using to search: def empactUserList = EmpactUser.search( searchQuery, [reload: false, result: "every", defaultOperator: "or"]) Am I missing something? Thanks, Alan.