Transcript Best Practices Slide Deck

Search can be Your Best Friend
You just Need to Know
How to Talk to it
IW 306
Ágnes Molnár
About me
 Ágnes
Molnár, MOSS MVP, MCSD, MCT
 Senior Consultant, R&D Director
L&M Solutions, Budapest, HUNGARY
 http://aghy.dotneteers.net
 [email protected]
Search can be Your Best
Friend You just Need to Know
How to Talk to it
WHY?

Information overload
Findability

Gartner:

8 hours / week / information worker

IDC:
9.5 hours / week / information worker

Searching without finding:
3.5 hours / week / information worker
COMPLETELY WASTED!
Business Requirements
What?
Where?
How?
Business Requirements
Data
Information
Knowledge
Description
Properties that
represent objects,
events, elements,
etc.
Data that can be
used
Information put
to action and/or
integrated with
other information.
Provides a basis
for decisions and
planning
actions.
Supporting
SharePoint
technology
- Lists hold data
and metadata
- Libraries hold
documents (with
data and
information)
Lists and libraries
- Documents
- Social
networking
Plan the Searching
Physical Architecture:
Server Roles
 Index
Server
 Crawling
 Indexing
iFilter
s
Databa
se
Metadata and
Permissions
Protocol
handlers:
HTTP, FTP, File,
BDC, Lotus
Notes, Custom
Content
Sources
Word Breaker
Noise Word
Removal
Conte
nt
Full Text Index
Physical Architecture:
Server Roles
 Query
Server
 Accept search queries from users
 Build return set
2
5
 Resturn results
?
4b
3b
Web FrontEnd Servers
3a
4a
Query Servers
1
1
1
Index Server
Database Server
Physical Architecture:
Scaling out
 More
Index Server
 More than 50 (10) million documents
 Too long crawling time
 Second SSP needed
 More
Query Server
 Need to include content that cannot be
crawled
 Query demand is rising
 More Index Server
Content Sources
When to crawl?
SharePoint sites
When NOT to crawl?
If you want to EXCLUDE
its content
File Share
Document search
requirements
Business Data
- External data search
requirements
- Integrated solutions
Website
Exchange Public Folder Important business
information
Search Scopes
 Refine
the queries
 Scope Rules




Web address
Property query
Content source
All content
Keywords and Best Bets
 Keyword:
 to mark specific items as more relevant
 they show up more prominently in the search
results
 Best
Bet:
 relevant items that you can choose for a
subject
KEYWORDS AND BEST BETS
Federated Search
 Advantages
 Conserve resources by crawling and
indexing
 Can include content that cannot be crawled
 Latest information from different content
sources
Federated Search
 Disadvantages
 Unable to configure ranking within the result
set
 Unable to control which results appear in the
result set
 Cannot scope the results
 Cannot combine the results into a single
result set
 The more search webparts on the same
page the more time to load
FEDERATION
Federate or not?
YES






remote site’s robots.txt blocks
SharePoint’s crawler
you need results only with
specific keywords and/or
keyword patterns in the query
content changes very often,
immediately crawling needed
queries under different security
context
infrequently queried contents
>500 content sources
NO




You don’t have enough
bandwith
content changes very often,
but immediately crawling NOT
needed
content that is not indexed by
the remote server
remote server does not return
with RSS or Atom
Findability Best Practices
Use Scopes
 Use Master Site Directory
 Train your users
 URLs and Managed Paths
 Content Types – Describing and Tagging
 My Sites and User Profiles
 Blog, Wiki

 Collaboration
 Knowledge Sharing
User Interface
 UI
scenarios:
 SharePoint
 Browser integration
 Custom application
 Separate several search results
 Easy to search – easy to use
 Use RSS / e-mail alerts
USER EXPERIENCE
The Magic Word: SEO
(Search Engine Optimalization)
 The
process of optimizing sites and
pages for search engines to result in
better relevance and ranking for the site.
SEO Best Practices – DO
Use keywords
 Place your content as high up in the page as
possible to get it more relevance
 Use clear site hierarchy – every page has to
be reachable
 Check for broken links
 Use a text browser (eg. LYNX) to examine
your site
 Test your site in different browsers

SEO Best Practices – DO



Use keywords
Place your content as high up in the page as possible
to get it more relevance
Use proper semantic codes:








<meta> tags (title, description)
Headlines (<h1>, <h2>, ...)
List items (<ol>, <ul>, <dl>)
Images: <alt>, <title>
Use descriptive text in your hyperlinks
Use descriptive page titles
Build site map
Use valid HTML and XML
SEO Best Practices – DO NOT
 Don’t
name all pages with the same page
title
 Don’t load your pages with irrelevant
keywords
 Don’t use complex URLs
 Don’t use temporary redirects
 Don’t use complex pages
 Avoid web spammers
SEO Best Practices
MAKE YOUR PAGES PRIMARILY
FOR USERS,
NOT FOR SEARCH ENGINES!!!
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