Search results refinement based on document contents keywords

Question

Do any of the search versions for SharePoint 2010 allow refinement of results based on keywords that appear within documents?

I know that the standard search functionality allows for searching within documents however it is unclear how rich this functionality is.

We would like to be able to rank results based on the number of times a keyword appears in the document (and to also use a thesaurus on these keywords). We would also like to be able to refine results based on these terms.

I believe this would require the creation of managed properties based on document contents, it seems like FAST search server might do this with it's meta-data extration but i'm not sure and I can't seem to find any detail on this beyong the list of 10 reasons to buy FAST search server.

In summary - is the above functionality available in any of the SharePoint 2010 search options?

Thanks,

Toby

Answer 1

The functionality that you want, is available within Fast Search for SharePoint, not in the other Search products. If I understand it correctly, the functionality that you seek, is to extract metadata from your documents, such as, for example, locations, persons or companies. Those 3 are available out of the box, you can add more extractions by configuring Fast.

The second requirement, ranking based on the number of times that a word is appearing, is also available through Fast ranking mechanics and not via other search products. (And i question if ranking based on the number of times one or more words appear is the way to go. Aside from that, the default ranking mechanism from Fast and Enterprise search do take this into account)

the thesaurus thingy can be implemented in various ways, depending on your requirements ;)