How Search has improved in SharePoint 2013?

Search feature has improved a lot in SharePoint 2013. With people exploring tones of information daily, it is critical to have a very fast search system. In previous version of SharePoint, users struggled to find the desired information. To overcome this issue some organizations even purchased Fast Search application but this required significant cost. Now you don't need to buy the expensive custom search applications because Microsoft has improved search feature in SharePoint 2013.

Preview of document: You can now see the preview of your document by just putting the mouse over a search result without opening the document. User can also scroll the entire document in preview pane only. While in previous version of SharePoint, to see the preview third party add-ons are required. Users can also see how many times their document has been viewed. The drawback is that only MS Office documents can be previewed. Still it is an amazing feature for search users.

Improved refinements: Refiner is like a filter that helps user in filtering the result by certain criteria. Although this feature is available in previous versions also but in SharePoint 2013 it is vastly improved. Microsoft has improved its usability by providing a visual interface on the top of it. For example you can set the criteria for date range using a slider instead of selecting static option like “10-20 days”.

Searching focused on user: In SharePoint 2013 you can set your own search preferences. SharePoint also provides you search suggestion based on your behavior, favorite and previous search. User can also see system generated search suggestions or choose to see their searched query result. When you searched for a query Search preference option also show you the previous document that you had searched for. You can also delete your history and set the language in which you want to see the result.

Improved search result: Search result in SharePoint 2013 has improved drastically. New ranking models are introduced in SharePoint 2013 which are used to determine which items in what orders has displayed in search result. It also determines how frequently an item appears in search result, which items are most frequently searched in SharePoint. The main motive is to improve the overall relevancy of search result.

Search availability: This feature is added to provide you with continuous availability of information. It will also show any newly added item or document in search query as soon as it is added in SharePoint.

Build in search options: All the Fast search options are build in SharePoint 2013 or you can say it has best of both world’s i.e. SharePoint 2010 and FAST search. It improves the user experience by providing faster search result.