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SPO search experience and customization

Anjana R 156 Reputation points
2021-12-27T17:20:18.677+00:00

Hello,

As per few Microsoft articles, it is noticed that Microsoft Search is the modern search experience in SPO modern sites whereas classic search is available in Classic or publishing sites.

I would like to understand the best approach to use in modern SharePoint sites in terms of using some degree of customizations. For e.g. whether Microsoft Search allows any kind of customizations such adding new search verticals/filters or adding new result types?

Also, the search settings under SPO admin center is applicable only to classic search or some of those applies to Microsoft Search as well?

Thanks

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A group of Microsoft Products and technologies used for sharing and managing content, knowledge, and applications.
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  1. Allen Xu_MSFT 13,806 Reputation points
    2021-12-28T02:11:51.973+00:00

    Hi @Anjana R ,

    Search admin can customize the classic search experience, but not the Microsoft Search experience. As a search admin you can tailor Microsoft Search to your organization so it's easy for your users to find often needed content in your organization.

    You use the SharePoint admin center to manage classic search and the Microsoft 365 admin center to manage Microsoft Search. Certain aspects of the classic search settings also impact the modern search experience:

    • The search schema determines how content is collected in and retrieved from the search index. Because both search experiences use the same search index to find search results, any changes you make to the search schema, apply to both experiences. The Microsoft Search experience doesn't support changing the sort order of results or building refiners based on metadata. Therefore, the following search schema settings don’t affect the Microsoft Search experience: Sortable, Refinable.
    • The modern search experience only shows results from the default result source. If you change the default result source, both search experiences are impacted.
    • Depending on the search scenario, some Microsoft Search features might not work if the classic global Search Center URL is not set to point to the URL of the default classic Search Center. Depending on your tenant, this URL is "yourcompanyname.sharepoint.com/search" or "yourcompanyname.sharepoint.com/search/pages". Furthermore, ensure that the Search Center site collection exists and that all users have read access to it.
    • If you temporarily remove a search result, the result is removed in both search experiences.
    • The classic search experience lets admins define promoted results to help users find important content, while the Microsoft Search experience uses bookmarks to achieve the same. When you create a promoted result at the organization level, users might also see it on the All tab on the Microsoft Search results page if they searched across the whole organization. For example, when users search from the search box on a hub site, they're only searching in the sites associated with the hub and therefore they don't see any promoted results even if they are on the All tab. But when users search from the SharePoint start page, they might see promoted results on the All tab. If you have defined both a promoted result and a bookmark for the same content (same URL), only the bookmark will appear on the All tab.

    Also see this documentation : Show the right search results.

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