All this talk about Search

News 

If you hadn't noticed, Microsoft does care about Search.

With the bid for FAST a leading Search vendor, Jeff Raikes stated that with the marrying of FAST's products with SharePoint, "we are clearly the leader in end-to-end search in the corporation."

Why Search?

Search is king.  If search doesn't work, all that great work you've done to get people to use a platform gets hard to find and people end up duplicating work.  The key to TCO and REJ and all that jazz is search.  It takes out all the wasted time of hunting and pecking and reproduction. 

My current recommendation for starting or moving from some other product to SharePoint is to start with search.  If you're trying to build a "build it and they will come" type portal, you have to start with something useful that will bring people back.  The first most simple and most useful thing is search.

Security vs. Search 

Is security the opposite of a good search?  Some would say that, but I'd say no.  With security trimmed search results, and educated users they can coexist and should coexist in a corporate environment.  When you compare enterprise search to internet search the biggest difference is not documents vs pages.  It's security and in this case permissions (authorization).  Couple quick tips: 1) Never cache your search results pages on a NON anonymous environment. 2) Never make your crawl account the domain admin account, it will automatically give it the rights it needs (with a read policy on the web apps).  Definitely don't combine these at would totally spell a disaster.

What should I know about Search Server?

With the recent announcement of Search Server and Search Server Express some may be wondering what all this is about.  First it helps people that are not using MOSS into the market for search.  It allows them to start to experience corporate search and helps MS better compete in the appliance space.  It also helps people understand the qualities of Search in MOSS in a round about way.  When you see these features on their own, you start to understand the power of search.

If you were confused about some of the new functionality in Search Server and were wondering when MOSS would be getting federated search, the wait will soon be over.  Richard Riley talked about a post SP1 service pack in his IT Forum Search talk.  He also explained that the new features would be included in this "rollup."  Daniel Webster who took really good notes and clipped some great content from Richard's deck did a good write up on Search server including the information on going from WSS to Search Server or Search Server to MOSS.  Great info.  He also points out what WSS 3.0 people should know about Search Server Express.  It provides cross site collection search for no additional cost beyond your Windows Server license (aka FREE).

Moral of this story, if you are using MOSS for your enterprise search, you're doing the right thing and federated queries will be coming if that's what you need.  (Don't ask for dates.)  If you're using WSS and don't have Search outside of the search in WSS, you should look at Search Server and Search Server Express (if not MOSS).