Help your users find the content they’re looking for

Blog, Published in admin | 17.04.25

We will cover the topics below:

• What is a search query?
• How can we adjust the built-in search results page in SharePoint?
• I didn’t search for this; why do I get it in my results?
• How to use operators to find the right document or content
  

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What is a search query?

The answer to the question is probably different depending on whether you’re a regular user looking for something or an admin setting up search results pages:

For the end user

For the end user, the search query is simply the words you want to find. Usually part of a text or metadata for a document. Most often, the user will simply type in the word, words or sentence they want to search for without a thought about whether it is free text in the document or metadata.
For example, the user types in the document ID they are looking for. The user will not think of typing DocID:123 to search specifically for the property.

For the administrator

For the administrator, the search query is the Keyword Query Language (KQL) query itself. Out-of-the-box the search query contains the words the user typed in the search box, but the administrator can also customize the query. For example, if the administrator wants you to be able to search only on a specific property.

In the document ID example, the administrator knows that users expect to get results from the alias DocID property, so they add the query DocID:{searchTerms} to the KQL query.

How can we adjust the built-in search results page in SharePoint?

It might feel like you’re in a jungle when trying to find what you’re looking for in the standard SharePoint search. You have a few standard verticals that can be edited that might not be very helpful for your organization.

As a SharePoint administrator, you can adjust the search results page:

• Edit which results is visible in the verticals (All, Files, Sites, and more)
• Edit which verticals appear
• Create your own verticals

Verticals, you might think. What the heck is a vertical?

Verticals are visible in the search results page as a “ledge” of options that helps the user to narrow down the results list.

For example, if you only want to see documents, you’d click “Files” (see picture).

How can we edit which results appear, depending on what vertical a user clicks?

1. Navigate to the root site of your intranet or the hub you want to customize
2. Click Settings > Site Information > View All Settings
3. In Site Settings, click Search Insights and Configuration.
4. In the Microsoft search page, click Verticals.
5. In Verticals, select the vertical you want to edit.
6. Click Edit. A panel will open with the settings for the vertical you selected.
7. Click Edit in the panel. The Edit page for the vertical opens.
8. Under Rules, click Edit.
9. The Add Rule page appears. Here you can add the KQL querys you want to specify the results.
10. Click Next until the Review and Exit page appears.
11. In Review and Finish, click Update vertical.
    Please note! It may take a while for your changes to take effect.

Edit which verticals to show

1. Navigate to the root site of your intranet or the hub you want to customize
2. Click Settings > Site Information > View All Settings
3. In Site Settings, click Search Insights and Configuration.
4. In  the Microsoft search page, click Verticals.
5. In Verticals, select the vertical you want to edit.
6. Click Edit. A panel will open with the settings for the vertical you selected.
7. Change the Status (at the bottom of the page) to Disabled.
8. Click Update vertical.
   Please note! It may take a while for your changes to take effect.

Create your own verticals

1. Navigate to the root site of your intranet or the hub you want to customize
2. Click Settings > Site Information > View All Settings
3. In Site Settings, click Search Insights and Configuration.
4. In  the Microsoft search page, click Verticals.
5. Click Add.
6. Name your vertical.
7. Click Next.
8. Select SharePoint as the source.
9. Click Next.
10. The Add Rule page appears. Here you can add the KQL questions you want.
11. The filter page appearsHere you don’t need to add anything.
12. Click Next.
13. Review your settings.
14. Click Create vertical.
    NB! It may take a while for your changes to take effect.

I didn’t search for this; why do I get it in my results?

Sometimes the items in the search results makes you scratch your head in wonder why they are included.

This may depend on how SharePoint handles words and letters. We have listed a few examples below:

The search does not distinguish local characters

For example, the letter a is not separate from å, ä or æ. If you search “kæresta”, you will also get answers to “karesta”.

The search is not case sensitive

For example, you can’t search to only show results from a word that only has capital letters. Shraepoint will simply look for the words and letters, regardless of capital or lowercase letters.

No need to add parentheses and hyphens

You may know that the text Avenyn (Gothenburg) occurs and searches for it, including parentheses. Then you will also get answers on Avenyn Gothenburg, because the search “ignores” parentheses.

Another example, If you search for ABC 123, you will also get a hit for ABC-123.

Note that there is a use of hyphen in SharePoint search, but more on this a little further down this blogpost.

You are searching for part of a word

If you want to find a word, but you might be in a bit of a hurry, like us, you might want to just write part of the word. Since SharePoint expects a more or less exact word, it will not find the results you’re expecting. But no worries, just adapt one of the operators in the next chapter of this blog to help with this.

How to use operators to find the right document or content

There are a variety of different operators to help find what you’re searching for. We have selected a few of our frequently used ones below. Let’s get in to how they work!

Wildcard search

Still a little stressed out and might not have the time or patience to type in whole or long words? This will be solved by using wildcard search.

In the example below, we can see that we have asked for instru*. The reason for this is that we are not sure about the spelling, it could be Instruction in English, or it could be Instruktion in Swedish. Here, we get both results.

Precise search

If you have a phrase that you know is typed in a specific order, you can choose to search for the exact text. To do this, you simply add quotation marks (“ “) around your phrase. This will search for exactly that phrase, in that specific order of words.

Combine or exclude words in your query

Ok, let us keep going with the Boolean operators. You might be familiar with these already – namely AND, OR and NOT. So how do we use these?

• The AND operator

When you are searching for more than one word, the search translates these to the boolean operator AND. This operator means that both words must be included in the results.

This might not be necessary to add, since using two separate words will automatically translate to this.

The difference between these two is that if you use AND, you also tell SharePoint that you want the result to contain these words in this exact order. If you don’t use AND, they can be in reverse order, and you’ll find them anyway.

• The OR operator

If you want to search for content that contains either of the word, but not necessarily both, you can use OR between the two (or more) words in your query.

Your query could look like this: onboarding OR introduction

The same results can also be achieved with WORDS operator. There is an important difference between these two operators though. WORDS is a synonym operator, which means that there will be no ranking of the results depending on how many times each word appears in the content.

And now you’re probably wondering how ranking works  We will not cover this today but keep an eye out for the next blog post… or if you don’t have the patience, you are welcome to talk to us and we can help you along the way.

But back to the query.

Your query could look like this: WORDS(onboarding, introduction)

• The NOT operator

If you want to exclude a specific word, you can use the NOT operator or a hyphen (-). This is best used in combination with what you want to be included.

For example, you want to find an instruction, but not for offboarding.

Your query should look like this: Instruction NOT offboarding

You can also use the hyphen (-) right before the word you want to exclude. Note that if you are typing both words together with the hyphen, the hyphen will be ignored ant not working to exclude any words.

Your query should look like this: Instruction -offboarding

These are some of our favorites to help refine the search results. And of course, we cannot rely on all users being trained in “how to search in SharePoint with operators”, but what we could recommend is to take a few of the above and put them somewhere your employees can easily find them.

Or if you have a customized search page, you can add the relevant tips and tricks in a text block of the page.

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Great job on reading this whole post! Hopefully you now have a better understanding in some of the basics of how SharePoint search works.

But we are not done yet!

In the next blog post, we will cover how you can set up a customized search page and much more to help you make it even easier for your coworkers to find what they are looking for. Stay tuned!

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