Overview of Querying

Through search queries, MSSearch assists users to find relevant data across large collections of documents. SharePoint Portal Server provides a simple Search Web Part for search queries. You can also customize search for SharePoint Portal Server. This chapter reviews the basic query process included with SharePoint Portal Server. For more information about creating custom queries for SharePoint Portal Server, see Appendix B.

You can describe the basic search query process as follows:

• From the dashboard site, a user enters a search query into the Search text box.
• MSSearch applies word breakers and stemmers to the query.
• MSSearch submits the query to the search engine. The search engine uses a probabilistic algorithm to rank the returned results.
• MSSearch returns the ranked and sorted list to the user. The results list is limited to 2000 results.

Deploying SharePoint Portal Server in a multilingual environment primarily affects the first two steps.