web
You’re offline. This is a read only version of the page.
close
Because of a lapse in government funding, the information on this website may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the website may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted. The NIH Clinical Center (the research hospital of NIH) is open. For more details about its operating status, please visit cc.nih.gov. Updates regarding government operating status and resumption of normal operations can be found at opm.gov.
Print Article: KA-05438

What is a BLAST request ID (RID) and why do I need it?

Every web BLAST® search that you run receives a unique identifier. The identifier is called request ID (RID). The RID is displayed in the upper left-hand side of your BLAST search results page (Figure 1).

 
A web page with several rows of information on its left side describing BLAST search. The right side of the screen contains a box for filtering BLAST results.
Figure 1: The top of a BLAST search results page with the RID assigned to the search (A). The page also links to Recent Results (B).
 
 
You can use BLAST RIDs to:
  • Access a recent search result (yours or shared with you by others) through the Recent Results tab on the top right of any BLAST page.
  • Share your BLAST results with your collaborators/students by copying the RID from the BLAST results page.
  • Refer to your search when you contact NCBI for technical support.
Note that RIDs allow temporary 36-hours access to search results. Permanently, you can save your search settings/strategy instead with one of these two options: