Searching not returning expected results

[Rob Nicholson]

We use the indexing service on Windows 2000 to search out intranet. The
searching/indexing doesn't seem to be very good sometimes. For example,
there's a HTML document that we know is there, we can navigate to and open
it. It's a small text page describing Take Command. The words Take Command
occur four times on the page.

But it never appears in the index. I've checked that SYSTEM has access to
the file and it does.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Rob.

[WenJun Zhang[msft]]

Hi Rob,

Could you please send the problematic html page to me? I'd like to live
test it and see what the root cause is.

My email address: ***@online.microsoft.com (please remove online.)

I look forward to your message.

Have a nice week.

Sincerely,

WenJun Zhang

Microsoft Online Community Support

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[Rob Nicholson]

Post by WenJun Zhang[msft]
Could you please send the problematic html page to me? I'd like to live
test it and see what the root cause is.

Hi WenJun,

I was just about to email the page to you and decided to do a few more tests
myself. The document is actually appearing in the search results but it's at
number 35 in the results list which the intranet page search results don't
show but the Query Catalog command in the management console does find it. I
guess the words "take command" are common in many other pages on our
intranet - not surprising really.

I assume this is because the indexing service is reasonably dumb (without
meaning offence!) in that it simply ranks documents on occurences of the
keywords and doesn't having an learning kind of mechanism? For example, if
ten searches are carried out on "take command" and when the user always
opens the same (35th) link, the ranking of that document increases?

Is there a way to add metatags to improve the ranking of this document as
you can do with search engines on the internet?

Also, why doesn't searching for "take command" in quotes find that phrase.
It seems to bring back the same list whether or not quotes are used.

Thanks, Rob.

Post by WenJun Zhang[msft]
I look forward to your message.
Have a nice week.
Sincerely,
WenJun Zhang
Microsoft Online Community Support
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Note: The MSDN Managed Newsgroup support offering is for non-urgent issues
where an initial response from the community or a Microsoft Support
Engineer within 1 business day is acceptable. Please note that each follow
up response may take approximately 2 business days as the support
professional working with you may need further investigation to reach the
most efficient resolution. The offering is not appropriate for situations
that require urgent, real-time or phone-based interactions or complex
project analysis and dump analysis issues. Issues of this nature are best
handled working with a dedicated Microsoft Support Engineer by contacting
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/support/default.aspx.
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[Rob Nicholson]

Post by Rob Nicholson
Is there a way to add metatags to improve the ranking of this document as
you can do with search engines on the internet?

Just found http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms692514.aspx which
describes the meta tags for the HTML ifilter used by the indexing service.

Cheers, Rob.

[WenJun Zhang[msft]]

Hi Rob,

Looks like you've got progress on this.

I still need to check the query in the page source to determine why the
page isn't with higher rank in the result set. If you are willing to,
please feel free to send me with the search project and sample indexed
docments to get a repro of the issue.

Thanks.

Sincerely,

WenJun Zhang

Microsoft Online Community Support

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Engineer within 1 business day is acceptable. Please note that each follow
up response may take approximately 2 business days as the support
professional working with you may need further investigation to reach the
most efficient resolution. The offering is not appropriate for situations
that require urgent, real-time or phone-based interactions or complex
project analysis and dump analysis issues. Issues of this nature are best
handled working with a dedicated Microsoft Support Engineer by contacting
Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/support/default.aspx.

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.