1. 10 TIPS FOR MANAGING
SHAREPOINT SEARCH
Mike Oryszak
@next_connect
10/5/2013

2. PRINCETON SHAREPOINT USER GROUP
• Different SharePoint discussions each
month on various topics. Announced on
meetup.com
• Meets 4th Wednesday of every month
• 6pm – 8pm
• Infragistics Office
• 2 Commerce Drive, Cranbury, NJ
• http://www.meetup.com/princetonSUG
• http://www.princetonsug.com
Mike Oryszak - @next_connect 2

3. THANK YOU
EVENT
SPONSORS
• Platinum & Gold sponsors
have tables here in the
Fireside Lounge
• Please visit them and
inquire about their
products & services
• To be eligible for prizes
make sure your bingo card
is signed by all
Platinum/Gold
Mike Oryszak - @next_connect 3

4. About Me
• Sr SharePoint Solution Architect
• Microsoft SharePoint Server MVP
• Developer and Architect with MS stack
since 1996
• Working with SharePoint since 2002
• Raleigh, NC Area
Contact Info
• Blog - http://www.mikeoryszak.com
• Twitter - @Next_Connect
• Email – nextconnect@live.com
• LinkedIn -
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeloryszak
Mike Oryszak - @next_connect 4

5. SESSION OVERVIEW
• Search Concepts Overview
• 10 Tips for Managing SharePoint Search
• Wrap-up and Questions
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6. SEARCH CONCEPTS OVERVIEW
10 Tips for Managing SharePoint Search
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7. HOW DOES IT WORK?
• Crawling
• A scheduled activity that processes
• Content – Full text search
• Meta-data – Content Classes, Site, List Columns
• Security – Content ACL
• Index
• Processed info
• Extremely fast compared to querying source content
• Provides security trimmed results
• Possible to have more than one
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8. IFILTERS AND SPECIAL FILE FORMATS
• Makes indexing proprietary document formats possible
• PDFs
• CHM Help Files
• DWF/DWG Engineering Documents
• Zip/Rar Archives
• Must install iFilters for non MS Office products
• PDF included with SharePoint 2013
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9. CONTENT CLASSIFICATION
• Content Classes
• Searches based on Object Type
• Great for filtering down the potential resultset
• Examples:
• SPSPeople
• STS_Site
• STS_Web
• STS_list_[doccumentlibrary] *
• STS_listitem_[documentlibrary] *
* Note name in brackets can be replaced with template name
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10. MANAGED PROPERTIES
• Managed Properties
• Can be used to query against a specific attribute
• 100+ by default, more can be added
• Examples:
• Author
• ContentType
• CreatedBy
• LastModifiedTime
• DocId
• FirstName
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11. 10 TIPS
10 Tips for Managing SharePoint Search
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12. CONTENT SOURCES
• Define the Content Sources
• SharePoint sites
• SharePoint User Profiles
• Exchange Public Folders
• Shared Network Drives
• Web Sites
• Business Data (with Business Connectivity Services)
• Each Content Source Definition can specify multiple locations
• Can have multiple definitions for each type
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13. CONTENT SOURCES
• Tip #1 – Enterprise Search should contain all relevant content, not just SharePoint
content.
• Tip #2 – Organize Content Sources based on your expected crawl frequency.
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14. SEARCH SCOPES
• Search Scopes Help to Narrow the Index
• Administrators define rules to filter down the results
• Rules can specify the…
• Content Source
• Location of Content
• Type of Content
• Property Values
• Examples:
• All Sites
• People
• Customer Service
• Document Vault
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15. SEARCH SCOPES
• Tip #3 – Define meaningful Search Scopes to help people search with context.
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16. SETTING CRAWL SCHEDULES
• Schedule Set For Each Content Source Definition
• Can set schedule for full crawl
• Can set schedule for incremental crawl
• Multiple Schedules Allows for…
• Scheduling dynamic content more frequently
• Splitting up the crawl process
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17. SETTING CRAWL SCHEDULES
• Tip #4 – Schedule incremental crawls frequent enough to provide relevant content.
• Tip #5 – Monitor crawl impact on farm and avoid full crawls during peak usage.
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18. MONITOR INDEX SIZE &
CRAWL DURATION
• Crawl times influenced by a number of factors
• Size of the index
• Number and power of servers running search components
• Limit of 10m items per index partition; I normally scale out sooner at about 7m
• As the index size grows, the time it takes to crawl increases
• Partitioning the index will split it across multiple servers and cut the crawl times
• If it takes 5+ days to complete a full crawl there could be service interuption
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19. MONITOR INDEX SIZE &
CRAWL DURATION
• Tip #6 – When the Full Crawl duration(s) becomes too high, review application server
resources and consider partitioning your index.
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20. AUTHORITATIVE CONTENT
• Adjust Relevancy Ranking
• Promote Important or Authoritative Sites/Pages
• Demote less important Sites/Pages
• Examples:
• Enterprise Content versus Workgroup Content
• Demote legacy archived content and shares
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21. AUTHORITATIVE CONTENT
• Tip #7 – Identify and promote most important and authoritative content and demote less
important content.
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22. KEYWORDS, SYNONYMS, & BEST BETS
• Map Keywords to Synonyms and Best Bets
• Synonyms can help link industry or company terms
• Abbreviations
• Aliases
• Best Bets are like Paid Advertising
• Managed at the Site Collection Level
• Site Collection Admin
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23. KEYWORDS, SYNONYMS, & BEST BETS
• Tip #8 – Use Synonyms and Best Bets to increase findability and accommodate industry
or company terms.
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24. REVIEW SEARCH REPORTS
• Reports Provide Info On
• Query Frequency
• Top Queries
• Search Keywords
• Failed Queries
• Best Bet Usage
• Best Bet Suggestions
• Managed at the Site Collection Level
• Site Collection Admin
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25. REVIEW SEARCH REPORTS
• Tip #9 – Use the Search Reports to improve relevancy and reduce the number of zero
results.
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26. INTERACTING WITH SEARCH
• The Search Center is the primary interface for users to interact with Search
• The Search Center is made up of numerous web parts for interacting with search
• Can have one or more search sites
• Can use the web parts on regular web part pages as well
• Every site collection can specify a default search center or results page
• Results pages can be specialized, with additional filters specified
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27. INTERACTING WITH SEARCH
• Tip #10 – Plan out the expected search behaviors and identify the search destinations.
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28. WRAP-UP & QUESTIONS
10 Tips for Managing SharePoint Search
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29. 10 TIPS REVIEW
• Tip #1 – Enterprise Search should contain all relevant content, not just SharePoint
content.
• Tip #2 – Organize Content Sources based on your expected crawl frequency.
• Tip #3 – Define meaningful Search Scopes to help people search with context.
• Tip #4 – Schedule incremental crawls frequent enough to provide relevant content.
• Tip #5 – Monitor crawl impact on farm and avoid full crawls during peak usage.
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30. 10 TIPS REVIEW
• Tip #6 – When the Full Crawl duration(s) becomes too high, review application server
resources and consider partitioning your index.
• Tip #7 – Identify and promote most important and authoritative content and demote less
important content.
• Tip #8 – Use Synonyms and Best Bets to increase findability and accommodate industry or
company terms.
• Tip #9 – Use the Search Reports to improve relevancy and reduce the number of zero
results.
• Tip #10 – Plan out the expected search behaviors and identify the search destinations.
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31. RESOURCES
• MSDN SharePoint 2010 Resource Center
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/bb964529.aspx
• Enterprise Search Planning
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263400.aspx
• Keys to Planning for SharePoint Search
• http://www.mikeoryszak.com/sharepoint/keys-to-planning-for-sharepoint-search
• Content Classes in SharePoint Search
• http://www.mikeoryszak.com/sharepoint/content-classes-in-sharepoint-search
• My Search Blog Posts
• http://www.mikeoryszak.com/tag/search
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32. QUESTIONS & FEEDBACK
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