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I Hate SharePoint Search Refiners.

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(EDITS: See Michael Pisarek's comments and follow up blog post below. I think the post still has merit with values changed, although probably not at the top of the to-do list in implementation with proper configuration.)

Without FAST search you still have all of the refiners shown on your SharePoint search but they aren’t real. The refiners are only going to refine the first 50 500 search results for your query, the rest, they don’t matter, right? That’s insanity (Note, with FAST search you’ll be refining everything, not just the first 50 500 results – see comment below).

The reason we use the refiners is because our original search was probably a bad search (think “guy who founded Microsoft” as a search for Bill Gates). Refiners may help if you know the answer is in a particular file format, but chances are, you’re grasping at straws anyways.

Here’s my big issue with refiners, users have no idea that the refiners are refining just the first 50 500 results. If what they’re searching for is #51 #501 it doesn’t come up with the refiners, but instead of continuing on in their quest, they assume the content must not exist. That’s a bad thing. It could mean that an employee recreates content, makes a bad decision, or moves on without completing what they were working on.

So, search refiners without FAST… they’re bad. What is your strategy for combatting this if you’re not running FAST (do you have one)?

(Image Credit: RaymondNorton.com)

Comments

Not entirely true...

Submitted by Michal Pisarek October 24, 2011 - 10:10 PM

This is one of the most commonly misunderstood elements of the Search Refinement Panel. You are correct that by default only the first 50 will appear in standard SharePoint Search. However this value is configurable up to a maximum of 500 as I have written about here http://www.sharepointanalysthq.com/2011/05/search-refinement-accuracy-index-in-sharepoint-2010/.

In fact the refinement panel is something that I really like because even without FAST search you can show refiner counts, create your own and even show additional categories. Check out my posts at http://www.sharepointanalysthq.com/tag/refinement-panel/

Cheers

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Thank you for the correction

Submitted by Nick Inglis October 24, 2011 - 10:20 PM

Michael,

Thank you for the correction, I've edited the post to reflect things accurately with proper configuration. :)

Nick

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This post and comment(s) reflect the personal perspectives of community members, and not necessarily those of their employers or of AIIM International