As a SharePoint consultant, I dread hearing those words. I am sure many of you reading this will be sympathetic as you will have listened to countless clients say things like, "Why can't it just work like Google?" or "It's not as good as Google, is it?" Well, to answer some of these doubters I have decided to do a few posts on Office SharePoint Server Search. At the moment, they will be focused on the 2007 release, but in due course I hope to return and add extra ideas for 2010. Hopefully, these musings will get you thinking about how you can make Search work in your environment for your customers or clients. This is the core of my response to the Google-lovers out there, "No, it isn't Google, but have you thought about what it could be?"
First, let's begin with the basics. A lot of people are not aware of the simple syntax rules when performing a SharePoint search. For a full guide, refer to Building Search Queries on TechNet, but for the juicy bits only, read on!
- Find one or more words: simply type in the words, separated by spaces. Search will look in content and metadata, giving you the most relevant results first (putting emphasis on closeness of the words and number of occurrences etc.).
- Search for a phrase: type in at least two words, separated with spaces and enclosed by quotation marks e.g. "sharepoint server"
- Include or exclude terms: if you must have a word included in your results, prefix it with a plus symbol. Similarly, if it must be excluded, prefix with a minus sign. For example: +sharepoint -exchange would return results with sharepoint in the content but not exchange.
- Property filters: any crawled or managed properties can be used in queries with the syntax property:value. Many are available out of the box (OOTB), such as filetype or author. With property filters inclusion is implicit so property:value is the same as +property:value. Here is an example, the search SharePoint backup filetype:doc author:"Mike Cox" returns Word documents containing the words SharePoint and/or backup in the content or metadata, authored by Mike Cox. The screenshot below illustrates this. Since the include is explicit you only need to prefix a property:value search term with a sign if you want to exclude results.
Search Results
By simply knowing the above, users can search in a much more intelligent fashion. Exact phrases is the obvious one, but the include and exclude as well as the property filters are very powerful. There is also nothing wrong with searching again once your result set is displayed. I might search for a couple of words then realise I only want to see the newer Excel formats. No problem, just add filetype:xlsx to the terms into the search box and go again!
Now the basics are out of the way, here are a few ideas of what you can do to really make Search work in your environment. It also holds possible clues as to future posts!
- Create new Managed Properties for property:value searches or, better still, to use in custom Scopes and Advanced Search Box Web Parts.
- Add Best Bets with synonyms so that users immediately see relevant internal and external links for queries they search often.
- Create different search results pages for different scopes. Why not federate a Google Blog Search with a scope designed to include technical articles written in house?
- Be inventive with Federated Search. How about creating a media search of your internal library and sending it to a results page that shows photos from Flickr in a Federated Search Results Web Part? Remember to take care over copyright, though!
- Heavily customise Advanced Search to meet the needs of your business. If you align Advanced Search with your own taxonomy it will become much more powerful.
I hope this post has got you thinking about Office SharePoint Server 2007 Search. As a final thought, monitor the keywords users are searching for. Search shouldn't be ‘fire and forget’, it has to be constantly monitored, nurtured and improved. Hey, maybe one day those same people will say, “I wish finding things on the Internet was as easy as our Intranet.” Ok, perhaps that is a bit ambitious 
