Search best bets

This is a quick win, and something most of my clients request or ask about when discussions around search begin: "How can I have an article appear at the top of a search result when a user searches for x". Quite simple really, SharePoint 2010 has an easy to use and easy to configure solution aptly named Best Bets.

This is all good and well, but "how do I configure it?" I hear you ask, well here's how:

1. Navigate to Site Actions > Site settings
2. Click on the "Search keywords"  link (found under the Site Collection Administration section.
3. You will now be presented with the following screen.

4. Press the Add Keyword button as circled (with much artistic skill may I add) above.
5. Now fill in the form provided (see the image below)

4. Once you have added the necessary fields click ok and your best bet has been set up. Testing the search will reveal the following - notice the top two results with the stars (those would be your best bet results):

Searching MOSS 2007 from within SharePoint 2010

I was looking for information on searching 2007 sites from SharePoint 2010, and found very little (perhaps it was my own poor searching methods, but nevertheless for those with the same affliction as myself here's how to set up searching of MOSS 2007 from SharePoint 2010!): 

Step 1:

1.       Grant read access for the search service account on all sites you wish to crawl/index

Step 2:

1.       Go to central admin

2.       Go to Manage service applications

3.       Highlight the Enterprise search service application and click Manage

4.       Click on Content sources

5.       Click on New content source

a.       Give the content source a name

b.      Select SharePoint sites from the list of available content source types

c.       Enter the address/es of the SharePoint site/s

d.      Specify the crawl schedules

e.      Check the Start full crawl of the content source option

f.        Click OK

6.       The content source has now been created and will start crawling immediately (if read permissions have been granted on these sites for the search service account)

Step 3:

1.       Go to central admin

2.       Go to Manage service applications

3.       Highlight the Enterprise search service application and click Manage

4.       Click on Scopes

5.       Click Create new scope

6.       Give the new scope a title that staff will understand and recognise

7.       Click OK

8.       The scope will now appear in the current list of scopes, click Add rules

9.       From scope role type select Content Source

10.   Select the content source you created earlier from the drop down box

11.   Click OK