Search Tools for SharePoint

Have you ever used the search in Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server?

Most people have no idea of the limitation and are frustrated when they cannot find what they want.

Why do we get frustrated with the Out of the box ( OOB) SharePoint search? Because it doesn't do boolean searching!

Why do we want boolean searching? Because we are used to it with Google!

There are now a few tools out there to enhance your searching and even provide extra features such as relevancy and searching reports to help administrators with classifications etc.

Coveo - reduces the need for portal server as this works with both Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal server.
http://www.coveo.com/

Ontolica - only works with SharePoint Portal server.
http://www.ontolica.com/

Entopia K-Bus for SharePoint - only works with SharePoint Portal server.
http://www.entopia.com

This space is going to get a lot more competitive with the new upcoming version of SharePoint V3. As it uses SQL Server 2005 behind the scenes we are going to see the relevancy functionality of the SQL Server 2005 search engine used in many more search products, particularly with SharePoint!

If you have had a good experience with these products are any others, please let us know.

Tom Bizannes
SharePoint Consultant
http://www.macroview.com.au