Visitors choose search to navigate your Web site more frequently than any other navigation option. Search usage often exceeds links, menus, or site maps. This is especially true when visitors have a term or phrase already in mind. Advanced visitors may narrow down their search results by adding special terms or query strings.
As an administrator or developer, you want to provide the optimum search results quickly, with the most relevant results near the top. To accomplish this, adjust the search engine results by setting Using Synonym Sets, Suggested Results, and keywords.
In some cases, you can anticipate what the visitor is looking for and provide a convenient way for them to see results from the click of a button or image. To do this, developers can create automated queries that provide the unique combination of keywords and terms that provide results that are highly targeted to the visitor's quest. These queries are found in the code-behind and use the search API.
The Web site search should provide a simple user interface and relevant results. The Web Search server controls let your visitors perform basic and advanced searches, and filter results.
To provide your Web site with search capabilities, your developer places Site Search server controls on a page. See Also: Site Search Server Controls
The search may look like the image below, although your developer has total control over the "look and feel" of search controls.
NOTE: You can designate a folder outside of Ektron to be searched. For more information, see Setting Up Integrated Search.
The Basic Search finds content that satisfies these criteria.
NOTE: New and updated content is available only after the next crawl completes. See Also: Understanding the Search Crawl
NOTE: A user may force an OR relationship by entering OR between search terms, or using the Advanced Search's any of these words option. Developers may create an OR-based search using the API property ImplicitAnd
.
NOTE: The search does not find documents inside compressed files, such as *.zip, *.cab, and so on.
This list explains the values in the Advanced Search tab's Content Type field.
NOTE: You can find these files using Site as the content type criterion, but not using Documents.
NOTE: To search Visio documents, you must install the Visio IFilter. See Also: Installing the Visio IFilter
IMPORTANT: The search only finds text in the first 16 MB of any PDF document. So, for example, if the file is 32 MB, only the first half of the text is searchable.
NOTE: If you assign several images to an eCommerce catalog entry, and want to allow searching for that catalog entry by image file name, the search only works with the first image assigned to the catalog entry.
The Advanced Search uses the same search criteria as the Basic Search. (See Basic Search). The differences are additional options and the fact that you cannot use queries.
The advanced search screen may look like the image above, although your developer has total control over its "look and feel." See Also: Modifying Templated Server Controls
Each content item found by search is given a numerical rank. Search results are sorted by rank. Criteria used to calculate rank include the
If you need to ensure that certain content appears at the top of search results when certain terms are entered, use suggested results. See Also: Suggested Results
To learn about customizing ranking for Microsoft Search Server 2010, see
Search only accesses data about the content if the Content Searchable field is checked.
WARNING! Despite the value of this checkbox, if an Ektron user places this content item in a Suggested Results list, it appears in the Suggested Results area of the Search Results screen. See Also: Suggested Results.
Also, even if Content Searchable is unchecked, the Advanced Workarea search can find the content.
The default value of this field is determined by the ContentSearchable folder property. See Also: Folder Properties Tabs and Fields
The following rules apply when searching for values inside metadata.
true
or false
. See Also: Working with Metadata.
Metadata created through the Workarea creates a property in the following form:
ektron/{metadata | smartform}/{property}/{type}
See Also: Search Result Ranking
The following example shows the Web Site Search results screen. Your developer can customize it using the appropriate ResultsView server control. For example, to display eCommerce catalog entry results, the developer uses the ProductSearchResultsView Server Control.
This section also contains the following topics.
By default, if a search term yields no results, a message appears.
To customize this message:
workarea/resources
folder.EkResource.en-US.resources
. To learn how to work with a resource file, see Procedure for Translating Workarea Strings.lbl search no results
.If a site visitor enters a term that is similar to a crawled term, the "Did you mean?" feature often suggests close alternatives.
If you click a suggested term, a search is performed on it.
Microsoft Search Server 2010 controls this feature. To learn more about it, see these articles:
Prerequisite: You must be a member of the Administrators Group or assigned the Search-Admin role to access Synonym Sets. See Also: Defining Roles
IMPORTANT:
*Changes to a Synonym Set reset Search Server. To minimize impact on your visitors, make such changes during off-peak hours.
* Synonym Sets apply to all Ektron sites associated with a Search Server instance. For example, if Site A, Site B, and Site C use the same Search Server instance, they share Synonym Sets. This means that a Synonym Sets created in Site A may affect Site B's search results.
You can create sets of synonyms to work with the search. If a site visitor enters into the search field any term in a synonym set, the search returns results for that term plus all other terms in the set.
For example:
Synonym Set: Tuition
Terms: tuition, bill, payment, pay, fee, charge, price, amount, cost, balance
If a site visitor inserts bill into the search field, Ektron uses bill or tuition or payment or pay or fee or charge, and so on., to determine search results.
The Synonym feature typically produces more “hits.” So, while visitors do no more work, their chances of finding the right information are greatly increased.
NOTE: Previous to version 8.5, you could use Synonym sets in Suggested Results. This is no longer provided in versions 8.5 and higher.
A search term can consist of several words as long as the term is entered the same way in the Synonym Set. For example, love seat is part of a Synonym Set that includes sofa. As long as both love and seat are in a content item, the search finds it even if the words are separated. But, entering a single term, like love, will not find that Synonym Set. So, if you think people may search using loveseat or love seat, enter both terms into the Synonym Set. The metadata search does not use or support Synonyms Sets. If a search term consists of several words, it does not return synonym match results. |
Prior to Ektron version 8.5, synonyms were stored in Ektron. Beginning with version 8.5, Microsoft Search Server 2010 stores these in the Thesaurus Expansion Set. See Also: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff608188.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms142491.aspx
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Ektron, synonyms are automatically transferred to Thesaurus Expansion Sets.
IMPORTANT: A term can only appear in one Synonym set.
Prerequisite: You are a member of the Administrators Group or assigned the Search-Admin role See Also: Defining Roles
Your Web site may contain thousands of content items. Sometimes, depending on the search phrase, you want to focus the visitor's attention on a few topics. The Suggested Results feature lets you create a set of search terms, then specify content to appear at the top of the results when someone searches on a term.
Suggested Result links can jump to your Web site or an external Web site.
IMPORTANT:
* Prior to Ektron version 8.5, Suggested Results could be language-specific. Beginning with version 8.5, Suggested Results do not filter based on language.
* As of version 8.5, Suggested Results do not use terms from the Synonyms Set feature.
You can use Suggested Results to direct site visitors to business partners' Web sites. One example is a smoking cessation clinic near your hospital. When someone visits your Web site and searches for smoking, you can set the clinic to be the top Suggested Result.
As another example, your organization creates widgets but does not implement or customize them. Over time, several agencies develop experience at deploying and customizing your widgets. Therefore, you want to promote the supporting businesses on your site. The following steps describe how this works.
Suggested Results can also be used to advertise products, as used in the sponsored results section of search engines like Google® search and Yahoo!®.
Use this feature to provide search results that do not naturally appear at the top of the page. For example, you manage a university’s Web site. When a site visitor wants to know where to mail a tuition payment, he enters bill into the search field and gets these results.
Frustrated, many people call the business office to get information that exists on the Web site but is difficult to find.
Using Ektron, you create Suggested Results to direct site visitors to the correct Web pages. To continue this example, you could create
After you set up Suggested Results, this is a typical sequence of events.
NOTE: The illustration below is an example of how suggested results may appear. Your developer styles suggested results in the ResultsView server control.
NOTE: Only content in the Workarea language appears. To change the language, exit this screen, go to the root folder, and click View > Language.
an external Web site, enter its full address, starting with its protocol, such as http://
.
Site visitors use this text (circled in the example below) to select the linked Web page.
The summary cannot exceed 320 characters (including HTML tags). For example:
To display suggested results using templated server controls, set up a SiteSearchResultsView control whose Eval
statement refers to SuggestedResults
.
<ektron:SiteSearchResultsView ID="r" runat="server" ControllerID="c">
<ItemTemplate>
<h3> Suggested Results</h3>
<asp:ListView ID="suggestedResults" runat="server" DataSource='<%# Eval("SuggestedResults") %>'>
<ItemTemplate>
<span class="highlight">
<a href="<%# Eval("Url") %>"><%# Eval("Title") %></a>
<%# Eval("Summary") %> </span>
</br>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:ListView>
</ItemTemplate>
</ektron:SiteSearchResultsView>
The suggested results class displays only 3 fields: title, URL, and summary.
If you want regular search results to appear below suggested results (as shown in Suggested Results), your developer may want to style the suggested results to stand out. Some styling is shown above.
To display regular search results below suggested results and customize the standard result template, make the following modifications.
<ektron:SiteSearchResultsView ID="r" runat="server" ControllerID="c">
<ItemTemplate>
<h3> Suggested Results</h3>
<asp:ListView ID="suggestedResults" runat="server"
DataSource='<%# Eval("SuggestedResults
") %>'>
<ItemTemplate>
<span class="highlight">
<a href="<%# Eval("Url") %>"><%# Eval("Title") %></a>
<%# Eval("Summary") %> </span>
</br>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:ListView>
<asp:ListView ID="suggestedResults" runat="server" DataSource='<%# Eval("Results") %>'>
<ItemTemplate>
…
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:ListView>
</ItemTemplate>
</ektron:SiteSearchResultsView>
However, if you want to display standard results and use the default template, insert a separate SiteSearchResultsView control below the suggested results control. See Also: SearchResultsView Server Control
Use integrated search when you want the search to find files outside of Ektron but located on your Web server.
For example, you have a folder full of press releases that you want to be searchable but have decided to not add them to Ektron. Instead, you follow the steps below to make the folder searchable, and search results include the press releases.
NOTE: The descriptions below refer to the folder with content that is not part of Ektron as the external folder.
You can search all non-Ektron content by file title. For example, you can find Ektron.gif by inserting Ektron into the search field. In addition, you can search a variety of file types like .doc, .pdf, and .txt by searching their text. Finally, Microsoft Search Server 2010searches file metadata for media files.
Complete the following steps to see results from external files in your site's search results.
External folders must reside in the Web site so that IIS has permission to access the contents. Best practice is to create the external folder under the Webroot.
After creating the folder, place content in it that you wish to add to the integrated search. Then, follow the next steps to set permissions and configure Search Server.
The top-level folder that contains the external files must be accessible to the Web Site, and the user account used by search server must have permission to read it.
The following example sets up a user called IntegratedSearchUser and shares the external folder. The Search Server uses the IntegratedSearchUser account to access the external folder content.
The user now has Read permission to the external folder.
\\server\directory
) or full file URI (file://server/directory
).C$
in the path, like this: \\server1\c$\integratedsearch
.If you successfully set this up, you see your new content source, and the status shows "starting".
This step assures that your external folder content is included in Ektron search results.
This step sets the permission for the search server to access the external folder.
IntegratedSearchUser
.)Prerequisite: You are a member of the Administrators Group or assigned the Search-Admin role See Also: Defining Roles
The protocol handler is normally installed in this folder.
c:\windows\system32\DatabaseProtocolHandler.dll
If the handler is in the correct place, check that all folder names and paths are correctly entered in the Content Sources, Crawl Rules and Scopes in the Search Service Application settings.
Verify that the Search Server user account has permission to read and write to the content database. You may have to create a unique user on the content server for this purpose.
NOTE: Following text extracted from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff394619.aspx.
To search for any word or phrase on a Web site, enter the word into the field and click Search to begin.
IMPORTANT: You must capitalize boolean operators, such as AND.
The NEAR operator is like AND because it finds pages that include both search words. However, the rank assigned by NEAR depends on the proximity of the search words. A page with search terms closer together has a higher rank than a page where they are farther apart.
NOTE: The NEAR operator can be applied only to words or phrases.
<Ektron>
.filetype:gif
returns all .gif images). See Also: Property Restrictions Based on File InformationUse property restrictions to find content whose values match a given criteria. Properties that can be queried include:
Ektron's search supports several property operators. The following table shows sample property restrictions that you can use.
cmsauthor:admin filetype:jpg
returns .jpg files which were last edited by a user whose username is admin.You can also use ActiveX property values in queries. You can search for files created by most ActiveX-aware applications by querying for the following properties.