More details on MSDN/TechNet Search 3.0
This release was driven by customer requests, usability testing, and gap analysis of existing Search features, resulting in three primary search improvements:
· Make refining searches easier and more usable
· Improve relevance of auto-complete
· Globalize all search features and add more locales
Details are below, but here’s a few examples:
· MSDN Search for MessageBox in Korean, refined to only .NET-related results
· TechNet Search for groupwise migration refined to Knowledgebase & Forums (only) for Exchange (only).
The Search 3.0 release includes:
· Make refining searches easier and more usable
o Multiple refinements can be applied at once, enabling searches like “search only Exchange KB” or “search only SQL Forums”
o Refinements now categorized into topics (e.g. SQL, BizTalk) and sources (forums, blogs, etc.)
o Refinements now “stick” so they’re not lost when you change query terms
o More discoverable UI for viewing & removing currently-applied refinements
o More compact refinements display saves valuable screen real estate
o Knowledge Base articles included in each product’s refined results
o More accurate refinements, including updates for the latest “2008” wave of developer products
· Improve relevance of auto-complete
o Completions are now sorted to put most popular completions first
o Scalability improvements mean over 3x more terms are supported. More terms = more completions (and more relevant completions!)
o Autocomplete matches words inside queries (e.g. Console.WriteLine), not only “starts with” matches
o Autocomplete terms are now specific to brand (MSDN vs. TechNet) and language
o NOTE: these autocomplete improvements are on search results pages today. Extending them to search boxes on msdn2.microsoft.com and technet.microsoft.com is planned for the next couple of months.
· Globalize all search features and add Terra Lite locales
o Over 20 languages supported (not all exposed in UI yet), and across many more locales via fallbacks to closest language (e.g. es-mx falls back to es-es)
o Localized refinement names (note the refinements in the Korean example above)
o Autocomplete for Non-English languages
