Search can be Your Best Friend You just Need to Know How to Talk to it IW 306 Ágnes Molnár

About me  Ágnes Molnár, MOSS MVP, MCSD, MCT  Senior Consultant, R&D Director L&M Solutions, Budapest, HUNGARY  

Search can be Your Best Friend You just Need to Know How to Talk to it

WHY?  Information overload  Findability  Gartner: 8 hours / week / information worker  IDC: 9.5 hours / week / information worker  Searching without finding: 3.5 hours / week / information worker COMPLETELY WASTED!

Business Requirements What? Where? How?

Business Requirements DataInformationKnowledge DescriptionProperties that represent objects, events, elements, etc. Data that can be used Information put to action and/or integrated with other information. Provides a basis for decisions and planning actions. Supporting SharePoint technology - Lists hold data and metadata - Libraries hold documents (with data and information) Lists and libraries- Documents - Social networking

Plan the Searching

Physical Architecture: Server Roles  Index Server  Crawling  Indexing Content Sources Protocol handlers: HTTP, FTP, File, BDC, Lotus Notes, Custom Word Breaker Noise Word Removal iFilter s Conte nt Databa se Full Text Index Metadata and Permissions

Physical Architecture: Server Roles  Query Server  Accept search queries from users  Build return set  Resturn results Database Server Index Server Query Servers Web Front- End Servers b 3a 4a ? 4b

Physical Architecture: Scaling out  More Index Server  More than 50 (10) million documents  Too long crawling time  Second SSP needed  More Query Server  Need to include content that cannot be crawled  Query demand is rising  More Index Server

Content Sources When to crawl?When NOT to crawl? SharePoint sitesIf you want to EXCLUDE its content File ShareDocument search requirements Business Data- External data search requirements - Integrated solutions Website Exchange Public FolderImportant business information

Search Scopes  Refine the queries  Scope Rules  Web address  Property query  Content source  All content

Keywords and Best Bets  Keyword:  to mark specific items as more relevant  they show up more prominently in the search results  Best Bet:  relevant items that you can choose for a subject

Authoritative Pages  Authoritative Page:  A page that is considered a better match for any given search term

KEYWORDS AND BEST BETS

Federated Search  Advantages  Conserve resources by crawling and indexing  Can include content that cannot be crawled  Latest information from different content sources

Federated Search  Disadvantages  Unable to configure ranking within the result set  Unable to control which results appear in the result set  Cannot scope the results  Cannot combine the results into a single result set  The more search webparts on the same page the more time to load

FEDERATION

Federate or not? YES  remote site’s robots.txt blocks SharePoint’s crawler  you need results only with specific keywords and/or keyword patterns in the query  content changes very often, immediately crawling needed  queries under different security context  infrequently queried contents  >500 content sources NO  You don’t have enough bandwith  content changes very often, but immediately crawling NOT needed  content that is not indexed by the remote server  remote server does not return with RSS or Atom

Findability Best Practices  Use Scopes  Use Master Site Directory  Train your users  URLs and Managed Paths  Content Types – Describing and Tagging  My Sites and User Profiles  Blog, Wiki  Collaboration  Knowledge Sharing

User Interface  UI scenarios:  SharePoint  Browser integration  Custom application  Separate several search results  Easy to search – easy to use  Use RSS / alerts

USER EXPERIENCE

The Magic Word: SEO (Search Engine Optimalization)  The process of optimizing sites and pages for search engines to result in better relevance and ranking for the site.

SEO Best Practices – DO  Use keywords  Place your content as high up in the page as possible to get it more relevance  Use clear site hierarchy – every page has to be reachable  Check for broken links  Use a text browser (eg. LYNX) to examine your site  Test your site in different browsers

SEO Best Practices – DO  Use keywords  Place your content as high up in the page as possible to get it more relevance  Use proper semantic codes:  tags (title, description)  Headlines (,,...)  List items (,, )  Images:,  Use descriptive text in your hyperlinks  Use descriptive page titles  Build site map  Use valid HTML and XML

SEO Best Practices – DO NOT  Don’t name all pages with the same page title  Don’t load your pages with irrelevant keywords  Don’t use complex URLs  Don’t use temporary redirects  Don’t use complex pages  Avoid web spammers

SEO Best Practices MAKE YOUR PAGES PRIMARILY FOR USERS, NOT FOR SEARCH ENGINES!!! NOT FOR SEARCH ENGINES!!!

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