Removing or replacing SharePoint built in search 1

[achilleus]

Hi all. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

We recently purchased a Google Mini search appliance for use with searching our SharePoint 2003 site. This all works great. However, we would like to replace SharePoint built in search with our companies Google search.

Is there a template or another way to modify the pages to replace the SharePoint search with our Google one?

Thanks again!

AJ
SA
HS

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

Not sure if I can be of much help here. If Google has not provided a template or a webpart that will apply the search application to sharepoint I would think that you have to use FrontPage2003 to be able to put the application onto sharepoint (you can probably also do this by editing the configuration xml files).

Are you using Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server?
If you open the Site/Portal in FrontPage you should be able to get some more info on how the "built-in" search is put on the pages.

Just of curiosity does the Google Mini Search add any functionality for searches in SharePoint?

Regards,
Thomas

 

[achilleus]

Hi Thomas,

Once again, thanks for your help. I always get help from you.

Google has provided information on getting their appliance to work with SharePoint. The Google Mini search appliance has issues with JavaScript links. Which, of course, causes problems as the team site doc library links are JavaScript. With some help from Google, we found a way to make it work. Now, the appliance searches our SharePoint Portal Server site just like the regular Google searches the web. Very happy with the results (NO, I do not work for Google ).

The built in SharePoint search is just no good. So I want to completely remove it from the site and replace with the Google search. I can add it as a webpart ok. But I want to get rid of the built in search. Or replace it with Google.

We'll take a look at it in FrontPage and see what we can see. I'll let you know what we find.

Thanks!


AJ
SA
HS

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

well I was not of any help in this one! Thanks for the information about the Google Mini Search.

I will probably stick with the SPS built in search. It is running very nice and smooth and once it's been configured properly it works excellent.

How come you do not think the built in search is no good?
(Just curious to hear what other peoples experiences are)

Regards,
Thomas

 

[achilleus]

Sometimes it's helpful just to know someone is listening. <g>

I was unhappy with the performace of the built in SPS search. We found that, without extensive customization, that it didn't index all of the team site documents. I also was not impressed with the type of results it would display. The results didn't seem logical. When I search for something on Google, lets say "price list", the first result I get is our pricing list. When I do the exact same search on SPS, I get everything BUT the price list. I know I can go in and add best bets and all that. But I don't really want to have to do that for every document of search.

And, of course, a Google box is a fun IT toy.

Thanks again!

AJ
SA
HS

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

Yes I can agree that the SPS search is not that logical It needs a lot of tweaking and tuning to get it perfect...hmm..maybe I have had to much time on my hands doing that!

Thanks for the info!

Regards,
Thomas

 

[philhege]

I don't see where you can "tweak" SPS search to return logically-organized results. It seems that the return set is a random pile of documents retrieved from the index that just happen to have some of the search phrase words contained therein.

If anyone can point the way toward better search results from this turkey, I'm all ears. (Oh, and where's the "Advanced Search" page? You know, date ranges, document attributes, etc.)

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

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I'm not as think as you confused I am.
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Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
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Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

With "tweak" I mean that you will have to create and manage Keywords and Keywords Best bets and also setup your own search scopes and content sources and that way you will be able to get somewhat more logical results And you do have an Advanced search page, that you can enable in SharePoint and you can also chose properties that you want to include in an advanced search.

But it is Microsoft that is behind this so why make it that bloody logical and good from the beginning

Regards,
Thomas

 

[achilleus]

http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/

Money well spent.

AJ
SA
HS

 

[philhege]

Thanks, Thomas, now please point out exactly where in the demented spiderweb called SPS Administrator that I can set and manage these advanced search attributes.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'm not as think as you confused I am.
-----------
Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
-----------
Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

On the portal under Site Settings, Manage Properties of Crawled Content you can chose to either add or remove those from an advanced search. When you click a property of a crawled document you will see if it is included in the advanced search or not.

Setting up keywords and best bets will make the search results more logical. For example. I am working in a division called Document Management so if someone executes a query for Document Management I chose to display our Document management site as a best bet which means it will be the first result in the result list.

I have also setup a couple of search scopes where you can search for only WSS sites connected to the portal and also depending on what you search for I have created keywords, just to make the result list show up the most "relevant" information.

I am still configuring and updating my search functionality but so far I am pretty happy with the results.

Regards,
Thomas

 

[philhege]

By "Advanced Search", I mean the capability as in Google to query for documents in a specific date range, by a specific phrase, etc.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'm not as think as you confused I am.
-----------
Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
-----------
Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[Thomas2000]

That is a bit more tricky with the built in search, but by defult you can search for created or modified range but I also which there were more options there. But by a specific phrase you can search, although it is not as advanced as in for example Googles search. You actually search for properties and the metadata handling could also be a bit better in SharePoint (as always with Microsoft, you will have to get 3rd party products).

Regards,
Thomas

 

[Thomas2000]

Just browsed through some blogs and found this link about customizing the ShaerPoint Search

http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/de...ml/Office_SharePointPortalServerSearchBox.asp