SharePoint 2010 : Configuring Search Settings and the User Interface - Search Keywords

Keywords are used to configure a relationship between a keyword, synonyms, and a manually defined result set called best bets. Many companies have content where some terms are especially important or have a special meaning. This then leads to a particular query not returning a particular search result or the wanted search result is too far down in the search result set.

Search keywords are a very useful feature in these types of scenarios. They can either be used to define synonyms for particular keywords or to add/emphasize specific search results on the search results page using best bets and the Best Bets Web Part.

Even though this feature is also available in SharePoint 2010, it is especially useful in SharePoint 2010 due to the search statistics available. Now an administrator can find often-searched-for query terms and augment the search results of these with specially selected best bets.

Managing Search Keywords

The search keywords page is used to create the mapping between keywords and synonyms. Additionally best bets can be configured for each keyword, as shown here. The search keywords page is accessed from Site Actions => Site Settings => Site Collection Administration => Search Keywords.

The first page that is presented is the keywords overview page (Figure 1). This page displays a searchable and sortable list of all defined keywords. The list has columns showing the keyword, best bets, synonyms, expiry date, and contact. As it displays almost all relevant information of the keywords, it is easy to get an overview over the keyword corpus.

Figure 1. SharePoint 2010 Search Keywords list

New keywords are created by clicking the Add Keyword button. Existing keywords can be edited or deleted by clicking the keyword itself and choosing the appropriate option from its context menu. Choosing Add Keyword or the Edit option opens the keywords editor page (Figure 2). This page allows administrators to set the following:

• Keyword phrase
• Synonyms
• Best bets
• Description
• Contact
• Publishing and review dates

Figure 2. Search Keywords creation page

Once a keyword has been created or edited, it is available for search. No crawling is required for keywords to take effect. This enables the creator to immediately test the keyword and synonyms to confirm the behavior is as expected.

Keywords and Synonyms

The keyword phrase defines the associated search term. No other keyword or synonym can use this phrase. For this reason, it is very important to plan which keywords to use. In the case where a keyword candidate is also a synonym for other keyword candidates, another keyword should be used instead to avoid ambiguous keywords and synonyms. The synonyms define terms that users might search for when looking for the keyword. SharePoint knows if a term has already been used as a keyword or synonym and prevents it from accidentally being used multiple times.

Best Bets and Description

Best bets are a manually defined set of results that will be returned when searching for either the keyword or any synonym for the keyword. The default presentation is shown in Figure 3.

Best bets can be displayed to the user in the Best Bets Web Part, disregarding what search results normally would be returned. This way specific results not found in the search can be displayed to the user depending on the query. Another benefit is the ability to emphasize these to the user using either the default presentation as shown here or custom styling techniques. Best bets do not replace any other search results that would normally be returned. Trimming of the normal search results, however, does take place such that the normal search result set does not include results from the best bets set. 

Figure 3. Example of search keywords

A description of the keyword can be added. This description will be shown on the search results page. The description is used to display additional information about a specific keyword and its synonyms. For the keyword just shown, the description is used to provide information about a particular person's job title. This could also be used to show additional information about a specific product name or guidance if searching for keywords known to produce poor results.

Contact and Publishing

In the Contact field, the user profile of the user to contact with events for the keyword is specified. This way a user can be set as owner or administrator of the keyword. Given the required permissions to edit search keywords, it is suggested that this be the creator of the keyword, or that the Contact be granted permissions to manage keywords. It will complicate maintenance if a third party with no permissions to edit the keyword gets the notifications.

Keywords allow for a start date and end date to be specified. The start and end dates enable keywords to be created before they take effect and to automatically expire at a given date. Searches for this keyword or any of the synonyms will not return best bets outside of the start and end date interval. This is useful if, for instance, the keyword is relevant only for a time-limited campaign or for other reasons is time-dependent. It also facilitates management if the keyword does not have to be created at the exact time it will take effect. Another use for the end date is to avoid having to delete keywords if, for some reason, they are not wanted for a particular period but might be useful in a future scenario. Then the keyword does not have to be recreated when it becomes relevant again. Simply change the start and end dates to reactivate it.

Keywords also have a review date setting. When the set review date expires, the user defined in the Contact field will get a notification to review the keyword. This mechanism is especially useful in cases where a keyword is relevant for a limited time only, but the exact end date is not known. This way the Contact can be reminded to reconsider the end date or set a new review date.

Maintenance

One of the biggest challenges with search keywords is the amount of manual maintenance required. Administrators tend to put a low priority on maintaining a meaningful and useful corpus of search keywords after some time. It is therefore important that this task receives focus during normal SharePoint maintenance planning.

Keywords are generally best maintained by non-technical staff. Keyword management, however, does require site collection administrator privileges, and normal non-technical staff is almost never granted this role. Deciding who should be the Contact and generally manage keywords must take this into account.

End dates are often left blank, which means that the search keyword will never expire. There are many situations where this is useful (e.g., for company name aliases, etc.). Often, however, keywords might be relevant only for time-limited products, campaigns, etc., which causes them to exist years after their actual relevancy. Even company names and aliases sometimes change after a longer period. Creating a policy for using the review date setting can counter issues with outdated keywords.

One reason the review functionality of keywords often is not utilized is that it is not clear who should receive notifications and when it requires review. Especially if the Contact leaves the company, this becomes an issue, as the review notifications then might not be caught.

Another challenge with search keywords is their dependency on fixed URLs for associated best bets. When a document or site that is referenced by a best bet is moved or deleted, the corresponding keyword should also be updated such that it doesn't reflect this broken URL in its best bets anymore.

For the reasons just mentioned, periodic manual inspection of keywords should be included in the maintenance policy.

Suggested Uses for Keywords

Planning how and when to best use keywords can be a challenge. A keyword is not very useful by itself. The obvious use of keywords is to emphasize specific files or sites, but they can also be useful in a number of other scenarios.

Announcements can be created using keywords. For instance, a user who searches for a specific person or product name can be notified that the person has left the company or that the product name has changed to something else.

Ambiguity, where words mean several things, can be explained to the user, using the description to explain the different meanings and possibly give links to a page with more details on the definitions.

Topic policies can be communicated to users. A search for “expenses” could inform the user to contact the finance department for all expense-related information. The same could be the case with profanity, where searches for pre-defined obscene words could give a warning and link to a page containing a profanity policy.

Links to external pages using best bets that make sense for a keyword but are not indexed by SharePoint are useful for associating keywords to sister companies' web sites or other relevant external resources outside direct control of the company. Another use of links to external pages is to associate a keyword such as a customer name with links to all relevant subpages on that customer's web site.

For companies that charge for references, sponsored links can be created to allow customers of that company to get their references emphasized in the search results list at an additional cost. This is not unlike what most larger search engines like Google do.