Query Suggestions
Query suggestions, or search suggestions as they
are commonly called, are shown as a drop-down on the search box as the
user types in search terms. Search suggestions are shown as
“search-as-you-type,” if any suggestions exist that match the text in
the search box. However, turning on this feature (Figure 7)
but selecting the Shoq query suggestions check box does have some
significant drawbacks that need to be considered. First, the scope from
which suggestions are generated is farm-wide, which means that certain
search terms might have a different meaning for different departments in
an organization. Also it is not always desired that a specific term
should yield a search suggestion in all search centers. An example could
be that searching for the word “tax” should yield search suggestions on
current tax-related issues in a finance department, whereas in the
sales department it should yield suggestions on tax related to different
product groups and markets instead. Another aspect is secrecy. It might
not be desired that everybody have access to suggestions of searches
performed by management. These searches might have a private nature. For
these reasons, it should be considered whether suggestions are feasible
for a given organization or corporation.
Figure 7. Enabling query suggestions
Turning on query suggestions introduces some
overhead, as new requests to the web application and in turn to the
search database are made each time the user enters new text. This can be
mitigated to some degree by introducing a suggestion delay and by
restricting the number of suggestions to display. If a search box has
heavy traffic, it can be a good idea to turn off query suggestions to
improve performance.
Note
Users can disable query suggestions on the User Preferences page on the
search box. Users cannot enable query suggestions on the User
Preferences page if they have been disabled on the Search Box Web Part.
Additional Query Terms
In the Query Text Box settings panel (Figure 8)
it is possible to specify additional query terms. Additional query
terms allow the site administrator to define additional terms to be
applied to the search. This way the search box can
be targeted to specific queries that are feasible in the given context
of the search box. In organizations this could be used to further scope
the results of a specific search page. For an organization that has a
public-facing web site with a lot of subsites each relating to a
specific topic, it might be useful that queries performed in the search
box or search center of that site return only items relevant to that
particular site, but not limited to specific content by the normal
scopes group. An example could be a help organization that has
country-specific sites. It could limit the search result set of queries
performed on each country-specific site to yield only results that
contain that particular country name, disregarding the actual location
of the result.
Figure 8. Augmenting the query
If the terms info and local are specified, as in Figure 8,
the search result set will now be dependent on these additional terms
being present. It is recommended to use the “Additional query
description label” and the “Query box prompt string” to give the user
hints about the purpose of the given search box, as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9. Example of hints when using queries augmented with a fixed keyword
It is important to understand that adding query terms to limit the search results returned does not
replace proper security trimming. It should be used only in cases where
the context of the search makes it relevant to append query terms to
narrow down search results.
Search Core Results
The Search Core Results Web Part is used to
execute and display search results. The query itself is specified as URL
parameters. The query can be augmented and/or modified by settings on
the Web Part. In this section, we will look at configuring the following
search-related settings (Figure 10)
of the Search Core Results: Location Properties, Fixed/Appended Query
Terms and Language, and Metadata and Sorting. Also, on this Web Part the
layout of the search results can be customized using XSLT, which is a
template that in SharePoint is used to transform the XML output of the
Web Part (settings and search results) into HTML, which is then
displayed to the user in the browser.
Figure 10. Search Core Results settings
Location Properties
Per default the Search Core Results Web Part is unscoped, as shown in Figure 11,
but it uses the scope defined by the URL parameter “s” if defined. You
can configure a default scope to use if no “s” parameter is given. The
“s” parameter is especially useful in cases where a direct link to the
search results page is given. Such scenarios could be a link on a
content page where the link then includes search terms and scopes for a
specific topic related to that page. For instance, an organization could
have a link to a People search results page for people in a specific
department instead of having to maintain that information on the page
itself. To set a hard-coded scope, enter the scope name in the Scope
text box.
Figure 11. Choosing a search location
The Location property (Figure 12)
is used to allow selection between local and federated locations. The
selected Location property also affects which metadata properties can be
included in the search results Web Part.
Figure 12. Possible federated search locations
Local options include the following:
- Local Search Results: This is used for normal searching.
- Local People Search Results: The only hard-coded scope in
SP2010; people searching includes special functionality to support
better searching for similar spelled names, etc.
- Local FAST Search Results: This is used for normal searching with FAST.
Federated options include the following:
- Internet Search Results: Federated search returning results from Microsoft's Live Search
- Internet Search Suggestions: Federated-related searches (suggestions) from Microsoft Live Search
- Custom Federated Locations: Any custom-defined federated locations will also show up as a selectable option.
Note New locations are added using the Federated Locations page on the SSA.
Fixed/Appended Query Terms and Language
The Results Query Options dialog (Figure 13)
has options for defining both fixed queries and auto-appending
pre-defined query terms to the user's query. It also has a setting for
modifying the query behavior by specifying a query language.
Figure 13. Setting query language and augmenting the query of Search Core Results Web Part
