I have been asked this question few times by my MOSS Search customers. Question being: What is the difference in features in WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search?
One thing to note is that the Search in the 3 products are all based on the same Microsoft Search core indexing engine. However, there are differences between the 3 SharePoint search versions. This table does a comparison of features in the 3 products:
Feature
Search in WSS 3.0
Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search
Enterprise Search in MOSS 2007
What can be indexed
Local SharePoint content
SharePoint sites, Microsoft Exchange Server content, file shares, Lotus notes, custom content.
SharePoint sites, Microsoft Exchange Server content, file shares, Lotus notes, custom content, line-of-business (LOB) content.
Rich, relevant results
Yes
Alerts
RSS
Did you mean?
Collapsing of duplicates
Yes to all
Best bets
Results removal, Query reports
No to all
Search Center / Tabs
No
Search Center without Tabs
Search Center with Tabs
People search
Knowledge network
Business Data Search
Query Web service
http://<site>/_vti_bin/spsearch.asmx
http://<site>/_vti_bin/search.asmx
Security trimming of search results
Yes; supports default security trimming only
Yes; supports default and custom security trimming
Query syntax
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Search SQL Syntax
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Search Keyword Syntax
URL syntax
Enterprise Search SQL Syntax Reference
Enterprise Search Keyword Syntax Reference
Enterprise Search URL Syntax Reference
For more information, please see this article in the MOSS SDK: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa981559.aspx
Hope that helps,Mike