SharePoint 2010 Search - Some tips and tricks

Today I was working with my co-worker Natasja van Doorn on configurating the search results page for one of our customers. We are both pretty newbies on this area but discovered some cool features that are actually pretty easy to configure! We discovered these by just browsing the Internet, with some help of our friend Google Search ;). I want to summarize these features for you by providing the links.

Overview new search features
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee667266.aspx
This TechNet article gives you a nice overview of all the new features. We used this site to look for interesting features for our customer to make life with SharePoint search a bit more easier.

Suggestions
It is possible to let the search box give you a suggestion when you start typing a search term. For example you want to look for SharePoint 2010, once you start typing Sh the search box will suggest SharePoint 2010. This is automatically enabled. Users need to click six times on a search result. You can easily test this by clicking on a search result six times, and then run the Prepare Query Suggestions timer job in the Central Administration. This will activate the suggestion for you.

It is possible to manually add suggestions. Just folllow this site:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/chad/archive/2010/06/24/tip-34-adding-a-sharepoint-2010-search-suggestion.aspx


Did you mean?
You can also get suggestions after you performed a search. This is the Did you mean? feature. Just follow the instructions from Craig Lussier to activate:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/e0a2ae64-8464-41f3-84e7-319162e90f3c/


Refinment Panel
The refinement panel is an amazing new feature of SharePoint Search 2010. It really helps users find the right search results a lot faster and easier. It is possible to change the refinement panel. Just follow the instructions from this site:

http://www.sharepointanalysthq.com/2010/06/sharepoint-2010-search-refinement-panel-options/


Check the More links section for more cool articles about the refinement panel.

I hope you found this post helpful. It just provides you with the go to locations for some cool search features configuration.

Posted in: SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Search