Suggestions while typing search queries - Sharepoint 2010

As a user types keywords in the Search box, the Search Center provides suggestions to help complete the query. These suggestions are based on past queries from other users.

SP 2010 and Search Server 2010 Express Have a new feature for search called Search Suggestions.
This is the same thing as we get in google .

The Suggestions database is automatically built based on what search results are clicked on.

It takes 6 clicks within a year for SharePoint to add a suggestion If an administrator needs to add a suggestion manually this can be done using PowerShell.

The commands below will add the suggestion, "Suggestion" to the first Search Service Application and run the Prepare Query Suggestions timer job now. The Prepare Query Suggestions timer job is set to run daily between 1AM and 11PM local server time so this will speed up the time before the suggestion will appear in the search query suggestions list.

$ssa=Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
New-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -SearchApplication $ssa -Language en-US -Type QuerySuggestionAlwaysSuggest -Name "Suggestion"
$timer=Get-SPTimerJob|? {$_.Name -eq "Prepare Query Suggestions"}
$timer.RunNow()

After the above commands have been run and the timer job has been run, the suggestion and other suggestions in a Search Service Application can be listed by running the following command from the SharePoint 2010 Management Console.

Get-SPEnterpriseSearchQuerySuggestionCandidates -SearchApp $ssa

To remove the suggestion, run the following command.

Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -SearchApplication $ssa -Language En-Us -Type QuerySuggestionAlwaysSuggest -Identity "Suggestion"


Reference : Manage query suggestions

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh148698(v=office.14).aspx

Sharepoint 2010 Search from the Administrative prospective

New features and functionality for administrators

SharePoint Server 2010 includes new ways for administrators to help provide the most benefits for end users who are searching for information.

Improved administrative interface

SharePoint Server 2010 has the new Central Administration interface that was first available for organizations that deployed Office SharePoint Server 2007 and then installed the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers. This new interface centralizes the location for performing administrative tasks. With SharePoint Server 2010, administrators have an interface that provides the following advantages:

    A single starting point for all farm-wide administration tasks, including search administration. The most common search tasks are highlighted.

    A central location where farm administrators and search administrators can monitor server status and activity.

Farm Configuration Wizard

The Farm Configuration Wizard runs automatically after a Server Farm installation finishes. This wizard helps simplify deployment of small farms. It provides the option to automate much of the initial configuration process with default settings. For example, when you use the Farm Configuration Wizard to deploy the first server in a farm, the wizard automatically creates a fully functional search system on that server, which includes:

    A search topology that can support an index of up to 100 million crawled documents.

    A Search Center from which users can issue queries. This Search Center is created automatically if the person installing the product selects this option in the wizard.

The search system can crawl local SharePoint sites (sites in the server farm) immediately after the Farm Configuration Wizard finishes running.
Search service administration independent of other shared services

In Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the Office SharePoint Server Search service was bundled with other shared services (such as Excel Calculation Services) in the Shared Services Provider (SSP). In that architecture, you could not create a new Search service without creating a new SSP. In contrast, in SharePoint Server 2010, you can create and manage Search service applications independently of one another and independently of other service applications.
Expanded support for automating administrative tasks

You can automate many search administration tasks by using Windows PowerShell 2.0 scripts. For example, you can use Windows PowerShell 2.0 scripts to manage content sources and search system topology.
Increased performance, capacity, and reliability

SharePoint Server provides many new ways to configure and optimize a search solution for better performance, capacity, and reliability.
Scalability for increased crawling capability

You can increase the number of crawl components to do the following:

    Increase crawl frequency and volume, which helps the search system to provide more comprehensive and up-to-date results.

    Increase performance by distributing the crawl load.

    Provide redundancy if a particular server fails.

Index partitioning enables subsecond latency over an index that contains up to 100 million items, depending on the item sizes and types and other factors.
Scalability for increased throughput and reduced latency

You can increase the number of query components to do the following:

    Increase query throughput — that is, increase the number of queries that the search system can handle at a time.

    Reduce query latency — that is, reduce the amount of time it takes to retrieve search results.

    Provide failover capability for query components.

Topology management during normal operations

You can tune the existing search topology during regular farm operations while search functionality remains available to users. For example, during usual operations, you can deploy additional index partitions and query components to accommodate changing conditions.
Operations management

SharePoint Server 2010 provides new capabilities for monitoring farm operations and customizing reports.
Health and performance monitoring

Health and performance monitoring features enable an administrator to monitor search operations in the farm. This can be especially helpful for monitoring crawl status and query performance.

SharePoint Server 2010 includes a health analysis tool that you can use to automatically check for potential configuration, performance, and usage problems. Search administrators can configure specific health reporting jobs to do the following:

    Run on a predefined schedule.

    Alert an administrator when problems are found.

    Formulate reports that can be used for performance monitoring, capacity planning, and troubleshooting.

Report customization

You can customize reports that help you analyze search system operations and tune the search system to provide the best results for search queries. For example, reports can include information about what terms are used most frequently in queries or how many queries are issued during certain time periods. Information about peak query times can help you decide about server farm topology and about best times to crawl.
Searches of diverse content by crawling or federating

SharePoint Server 2010 can search content in repositories other than SharePoint sites by crawling or federating. For example, the search system can do the following:

    Crawl content in repositories such as file shares, Exchange public folders, and Lotus Notes.

    Use federation for access to search results that are gathered by other crawlers or search engines. An administrator might federate search results from www.bing.com or from a geographically distributed internal location, for example.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee667266%28office.14%29.aspx#BKMK_RESULT

Whats New in Sharepoint search 2010 ?

All of us know that Search plays an integral part of any successful SharePoint deployment and is an area that Microsoft continues to invest in with each new release of SharePoint.

Microsoft went ahead and acquired FAST some years back which now offers as a separate add-on to SharePoint for those willing to invest in high end enterprise search.  In addition to FAST, SharePoint 2010 search comes in a number of flavors each offering their own feature set and capabilities.

New features and functionality for end users.

New search query capabilities

• Boolean query syntax for free-text queries and for property queries
  
  SharePoint Server 2010 supports use of the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT in search queries. For example, a user can execute a query such as the following:
  
  ("SharePoint Search" OR "Live Search") AND (title:"Keyword Syntax" OR title:"Query Syntax")
  
• Prefix matching for search keywords and document properties
  
  Search queries can use the * character as a wildcard at the end of a text string. For example, the search query "micro*" would find documents that contain "Microsoft" or "microchip," and the query "author:bi*" would find documents that contain "Bill" or "Bing." Therefore, the query "micro* author:bi*" would find documents that contain both "Microsoft" and "Bill Gates."
  
• Suggestions while typing search queries
  
  As a user types keywords in the Search box, the Search Center provides suggestions to help complete the query. These suggestions are based on past queries from other users.
  
• Suggestions after users run queries
  
  The Search Center provides improved "did you mean" suggestions in case keywords in a search query appear not to be what the user intended. In addition, when the search system returns results for a query, the Search Center provides suggestions for related searches.
  
• Federated search connectors for searching the enterprise from Windows 7
  
  After SharePoint Server 2010 returns results for a search query, a Windows 7 user can create a federated search connector shortcut for that search scope in Windows Explorer. This enables the user to search that scope at any time from Windows 7. The search results and associated metadata are displayed in Windows Explorer, where the user can take advantage of Windows features such as file preview and drag-and-drop. For any given search query, the search results that are displayed in Windows 7 are exactly the same as those that are displayed in the Search Core Results Web Part when the search is conducted directly in SharePoint Server 2010.

 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee667266%28office.14%29.aspx#BKMK_RESULT
 

No Adobe PDF documents are returned in the search results when yousearch a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site

To resolve this issue, make sure that the Windows SharePoint Services Search service is configured to crawl PDF documents on each server on which the Adobe PDF IFilter is installed. To install the Adobe PDF IFilter and to configure the Windows SharePoint Services Search service, follow these steps:

1. Download and then install the Adobe PDF IFilter from the following Adobe Web site:
   
   http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611 (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611)
   
   Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.


2. Add the following registry entry, and then set the registry entry value to pdf:
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\<GUID>\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList\38
   
   To do this, follow these steps:
   
   
   
   1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
   
   
   2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
      
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\GUID\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList
   
   
   3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click String Value.
   
   
   4. Type 38, and then press ENTER.
   
   
   5. Right-click the registry entry that you created, and then click Modify.
   
   
   6. In the Value data box, type pdf, and then click OK.


3. Verify that the following two registry subkeys are present and that they contain the appropriate values.Note These registry subkeys and the values that they contain are created when you installed the Adobe PDF IFilter on the server.
   
   
   
   • 
     
     HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf
     
     This registry subkey must contain the following registry entry:
     
     
     
     • Name: Default
       Type: REG_MULTI_SZ
       Data: {4C904448-74A9-11D0-AF6E-00C04FD8DC02}
   
   
   • 
     
     HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.pdf
     
     This registry subkey must contain the following registry entries:
     
     
     
     • Name: Default
       Type: REG_SZ
       Data: (value not set)
     
     
     • Name: Extension
       Type: REG_SZ
       Data: pdf
     
     
     • Name: FileTypeBucket
       Type: REG_DWORD
       Data: 0x00000001 (1)
     
     
     • Name: MimeTypes
       Type: REG_SZ
       Data: application/pdf


4. Upload the PDF documents to the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site.


5. Stop and then start the Windows SharePoint Services Search service. To do this, follow these steps:
   
   
   
   1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
   
   
   2. Stop the Windows SharePoint Services Search service. To do this, type net stop spsearch at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.
   
   
   3. Start the Windows SharePoint Services Search service. To do this, type net start spsearch at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.
   
   
   4. Type exit to exit the command prompt.

Note If the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site already had PDF documents before you installed the Adobe PDF IFilter on the server, you may have to perform an additional step. After you install and configure the Adobe PDF IFilter on the server, modify a property of the existing PDF documents on the server. For example, modify a metadata property such as the title, or upload the PDF documents to the Windows SharePoint Services Web site again. When you do this, the Windows SharePoint Services Search service crawls the existing PDF documents again.

WSS 3.0: When trying to search on sharepoint site, Getting message “Noresults matching your search were found.”

1. Symptom –
=============

–>When you are trying to perform search on your SharePoint site  on your sharepoint server, you are getting following error message:

No results matching your search were found.
Check your spelling. Are the words in your query spelled correctly?
Try using synonyms. Maybe what you’re looking for uses slightly different words.
Make your search more general. Try more general terms in place of specific ones.
Try your search in a different scope. Different scopes can have different results.

–>Windows SharePoint help search is working fine and it gave results when we searched for “SharePoint”

–>Unable to get results on the SharePoint site

2. Cause –
==========

–>Issue due to windows Updates

3. Resolution –
================

–>We created a registry entry in the following location

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

–>Created a new DWORD key named “DisableLoopbackCheck” and modified the value to 1

–>We performed Full Crawl by the command

stsadm -o spsearch -action fullcrawlstart

–>We performed Search and it worked successfully

Indexing Pdf files Search results for pdf files in Sharepoint 2010

As Adobe is not a Microsoft product. There are some limitations on Indexing and getting the search results for pdf files. 

 If you add PDF as a file type for SharePoint Search, you will get the results however the icon will not be displayed. You can see that only the file attributes are indexed. 

In order to index the content of pdf files with SharePoint 2010 you need to install an ifilter

 Adobe provides a free pdf ifilter that works for most pdf files and there are a couple other vendors offering ifilter that you might want to try if Adobe’s doesn’t work. Adobe has an ifilter for free that supports most pdf documents. You may have the adobe ifilter installed on your home or work pc as it is also delivered with Adobe Acrobat Reader.  For those not supported, a vended ifilter from Foxit is usually the best choice. Links provided.

 1.  Download the pdf ifilter from Adobe here

 http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025

 or you can also try http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4025&fileID=3941

Note :  You need to install the 64 bit version of Ifilter 9 listed above. Other versions will not work

 2.  Install the ifilter on the App/Index Server

Download the Adobe PDF icon (select the smaller icon, at time of latest update, it’s called 16 x 16) currently available from http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html#pdficon

•             Give the icon a name or keep the default name: pdficonsmall.gif

•             Save the icon (or copy to) C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES

3. Edit the DOCICON.XML file to include the PDF icon

o             In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML

o             Edit the DOCICON.XML file (open with Notepad )

o             Ignore the section <ByProgID> and scroll down to the <ByExtension> section of the file

o             Within the <ByExtension> section, insert a <Mapping Key=”pdf” Value=”pdficonsmall.gif” /> attribute. The easiest way is to copy an existing one and then making the required changes  

5) Open the Search Service Application in Central Administration and choose the File Types menu on the left. Add pdf as an extension

 6) Restart the Search Service Application

Start => run => services.msc => find “SharePoint Server Search 14” right click Restart

Or You can run the command given below from the command prompt

net stop osearch14

net start osearch14

7) Do a full crawl

Note: You must do a full crawl for changes to take effect and the documents in the index to be updated.

You might find in some blogs mentioning the Registry change however it is not required .

Link to Download the Foxit Ifilter: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/products/ifilter

In some cases. I have seen that we might have to reinstall Foxit ifilter after an Upgrade of patches.

Capacity Management - Search limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
SharePoint search service applications	20 per farm	Supported	Multiple SharePoint search service applications can be deployed on the same farm, because you can assign search components and databases to separate servers. The recommended limit of 20 is less than the maximum limit for all service applications in a farm.
Crawl databases and database Items	10 crawl databases per search service application 25 million items per crawl database	Threshold	The crawl database stores the crawl data (time/status, etc.) about all items that have been crawled. The supported limit is 10 crawl databases per SharePoint Search service application. The recommended limit is 25 million items per crawl database (or a total of four crawl databases per search service application).
Crawl components	16 per search service application	Threshold	The recommended limit per application is 16 total crawl components; with two per crawl database, and two per server, assuming the server has at least eight processors (cores). The total number of crawl components per server must be less than 128/(total query components) to minimize propagation I/O degradation. Exceeding the recommended limit may not increase crawl performance; in fact, crawl performance may decrease based on available resources on the crawl server, database, and content host.
Index partitions	20 per search service application; 128 total	Threshold	The index partition holds a subset of the search service application index. The recommended limit is 20. Increasing the number of index partitions results in each partition holding a smaller subset of the index, reducing the RAM and disk space that is needed on the query server hosting the query component assigned to the index partition. The boundary for the total number of index partitions is 128.
Indexed items	100 million per search service application; 10 million per index partition	Supported	SharePoint Search supports index partitions, each of which contains a subset of the search index. The recommended maximum is 10 million items in any partition. The overall recommended maximum number of items (e.g., people, list items, documents, Web pages) is 100 million.
Crawl log entries	100 million per search application	Supported	This is the number of individual log entries in the crawl log. It will follow the "Indexed items" limit.
Property databases	10 per search service application;128 total	Threshold	The property database stores the metadata for items in each index partition associated with it. An index partition can only be associated with one property store. The recommended limit is 10 property databases per search service application. The boundary for index partitions is 128.
Query components	128 per search application; 64/(total crawl components) per server	Threshold	The total number of query components is limited by the ability of the crawl components to copy files. The maximum number of query components per server is limited by the ability of the query components to absorb files propagated from crawl components.
Scope rules	100 scope rules per scope; 600 total per search service application	Threshold	Exceeding this limit will reduce crawl freshness, and delay potential results from scoped queries.
Scopes	200 site scopes and 200 shared scopes per search service application	Threshold	Exceeding this limit may reduce crawl efficiency and, if the scopes are added to the display group, affect end-user browser latency. Also, display of the scopes in the search administration interface degrades as the number of scopes passes the recommended limit.
Display groups	25 per site	Threshold	Display groups are used for a grouped display of scopes through the user interface. Exceeding this limit starts degrading the scope experience in the search administration interface.
Alerts	1,000,000 per search application	Supported	This is the tested limit.
Content sources	50 per search service application	Threshold	The recommended limit of 50 can be exceeded up to the boundary of 500 per search service application. However, fewer start addresses should be used, and the concurrent crawl limit must be followed.
Start addresses	100 per content source	Threshold	The recommended limit can be exceeded up to the boundary of 500 per content source. However, the more start addresses you have, the fewer content sources should be used. When you have many start address, we recommend that you put them as links on an html page, and have the HTTP crawler crawl the page, following the links.
Concurrent crawls	20 per search application	Threshold	This is the number of crawls underway at the same time. Exceeding this number may cause the overall crawl rate to decrease.
Crawled properties	500,000 per search application	Supported	These are properties that are discovered during a crawl.
Crawl impact rule	100	Threshold	Recommended limit of 100 per farm. The recommendation can be exceeded; however, display of the site hit rules in the search administration interface is degraded. At approximately 2,000 site hit rules, the Manage Site Hit Rules page becomes unreadable.
Crawl rules	100 per search service application	Threshold	This value can be exceeded; however, display of the crawl rules in the search administration interface is degraded.
Managed properties	100,000 per search service application	Threshold	These are properties used by the search system in queries. Crawled properties are mapped to managed properties.
Mappings	100 per managed property	Threshold	Exceeding this limit may decrease crawl speed and query performance.
URL removals	100 removals per operation	Supported	This is the maximum recommended number of URLs that should be removed from the system in one operation.
Authoritative pages	1 top level and minimal second and third level pages per search service application	Threshold	The recommended limit is one top-level authoritative page, and as few second -and third-level pages as possible to achieve the desired relevance. The boundary is 200 per relevance level per search application, but adding additional pages may not achieve the desired relevance. Add the key site to the first relevance level. Add more key sites at either second or third relevance levels, one at a time, and evaluate relevance after each addition to ensure that the desired relevance effect is achieved.
Keywords	200 per site collection	Supported	The recommended limit can be exceeded up to the maximum (ASP.NET-imposed) limit of 5,000 per site collection given five Best Bets per keyword. If you exceed this limit, display of keywords on the site administration user interface will degrade. The ASP.NET-imposed limit can be modified by editing the Web.Config and Client.config files (MaxItemsInObjectGraph).
Metadata properties recognized	10,000 per item crawled	Boundary	This is the number of metadata properties that can be determined and potentially mapped or used for queries when an item is crawled.