Embodiments of the present disclosure provide techniques for using an inverted index in a pipelined search query. A field searchable data store is provided that comprises a plurality of event records, each event record comprising a time-stamped portion of raw machine data. Responsive to the receipt of an incoming search query, the search engine accesses an inverted index, wherein each entry in the inverted index comprises at least one field name, a corresponding at least one field value and a reference value associated with each field name and value pair that identifies a location in the data store where an associated event record is stored. Once the inverted index is accessed, it can be used to identify and search a subset of the plurality of event records, wherein the subset comprises one or more event records with corresponding reference values in the inverted index.