Hints and tips for using Portal Search

View some useful tips for using Portal Search.

Content Model has only one search collection

At this time the Content Model Search Service has only one search collection. This search collection is provided with the installation by default. You cannot modify this default Content Model search collection or create additional search collections under the Content Model Search Service. The content model search service is listed because you can include it in scopes.

Portal Search shows default names of search features in the default portal language

The Portal Search administration portlet Manage Search shows the default names for some search related items in the default language in which WebSphere® Portal was initially installed. You cannot change the language for these names, for example, by changing the default language for the portal or by accessing the Manage Search portlet with a user ID that has a different preferred language set in the browser. This applies to the default names for the following search related items listed in the user interface:
  • Default Search Service
  • Default Search Collection
  • Portal Content Source
  • Web Content Manager Content Source
  • Features.
For example, if the portal default language is set to English and the user has selected German as the preferred portal language or has set the browser language to German, the names for the Default Portal Search Service and its collections show in English.

Using the Search Center with external search services with different languages

In order to use external search services such as Google and Yahoo! with an English search keyword, a URL such as the sample URL mentioned in the Search Center portlet help for configuring the portlet works fine as is: http://www.google.com/search?q= . However, if you search in other languages, consult the documentation of the remote search service that you use to ensure that the web interface is set up and used appropriately for the language that you use for your search. This can avoid problems with the displayed results, depending on the combination of languages set for WebSphere Portal, your browser, and the search.

Dynamic portal pages are not added to the search seedlist

Dynamic WebSphere Portal pages are not added to the Portal Search seedlist. Dynamic pages can have portlets, and portlets are added to the seedlist; therefore, if such pages are added to the seedlist, users get duplicate result list items. If you want to make HTML on a page searchable, create a static portal page and add the HTML. The static page will then be added to the seedlist and listed among search results. For more detailed information about static and dynamic pages see Creating and adding static content and Dynamic user interfaces.

Search collections unavailable in cluster if failover occurs

Problem: If a cluster member in a cluster fails, users who were using the affected cluster member when the failover occurred can no longer access search collections. This can occur with horizontal scaling when a node fails or with vertical scaling when a particular cluster member fails.

Solution: Users who are logged into the cluster member that failed must log out of WebSphere Portal and then log back in before they will be able to access search collections again.

Search can return documents based on metadata

Search can return documents based on metadata of these documents, not just on words found in the fields or actual text of the document. It might appear to Portal Search users that their searches return documents which do not appear to match the search criteria.

Cause: Metadata for documents is also indexed for search. Therefore if the metadata of documents matched the search criteria, these documents are also returned as results for the search.

Solution: This works as designed and is usually considered to be of benefit.

Documents from deleted content source can remain available under scope

If you delete a content source, then the documents that were collected from this content source will remain available for search by users under all scopes which included the content source before it was deleted.

Cause: These documents will be available until their expiration time ends.

Solution: You can specify the expiration time under Links expire after (days): under General Parameters when you create the content source.

Portal Search portlets are not compatible with WSRP

The Portal Search portlets cannot be provided as WSRP services, as some additional and more advanced WebSphere Portal concepts and features are not reflected by the current WSRP standard yet. This includes the Portal Search portlets Manage Search and the Search Center.

Virtual portals have separate search services and collections

Search services and search collections are separate for individual virtual portals and are not shared between individual virtual portals. Set up separate search services and separate search collections for each individual virtual portal. These collections can be used to crawl and search the same set of documents.