In the past I’ve written about and presented on the importance of planning your search strategy.  SharePoint makes search so easy to just turn on, but without the proper planning and understanding of how the search engine works, users will often complain that “search sucks!”  In SharePoint Server 2010 there’s a ton of return on investment (ROI) that can be realized through an effective search strategy.  If you think about the potential value that could be seen by enabling everyone in your organization to find the content they are looking for within seconds, versus having to go through a much more manual effort, it doesn’t take too long to see the massive potential.

Planning your search strategy is more important than ever – at least that’s what the title of this article says.  Why would I make this claim?  Aside from the large amount of ROI you can realize today through a well-designed search strategy, the other thing to consider is that search is going to be more pervasive in SharePoint Server 2013.  Not only will there be great new features available in search, but it will also be one of the primary ways to do content management. 

Let me back up for a moment.  Traditionally in SharePoint the way a user would use search would be to type in a query and hit the search button, then get results back.  This process is referred to as “keyword searching.”  With SharePoint Server 2013 this will still be possible, but search can also be used to drive content to the page even if a user doesn’t run a query.  This concept sounds a little confusing at first, but chances are you’ve already seen this in action across the Internet.  Have you ever been to a site where you’ve done some online shopping and then the next time you go to the homepage there are items being suggested to you based on items you’ve recently viewed or purchased?  That approach is called “search driven content.” 

 There’s a long list of reasons as to why this is a very good thing but I’ll try to list a few of the main reasons:

·       Content can now be rolled up across site collections.  This was always a limiting factor with the Content Query Web Part or Data View Web Part.

·       Search performs much better as a way to roll up content than previous web parts.

·       If you can get content into your search index, you’ll be able to surface it.  This opens up new possibilities for content management scenarios – perhaps you were indexing content that came from SQL as well as other line-of-business applications.  You’ll now have new ways in which you can surface that content to your users.

 This is all really scratching the surface of what will be possible.  The key takeaway here is that even if your company isn’t planning to migrate to SharePoint Server 2013 right away, all of those search strategy planning techniques that provide tons of ROI in SharePoint 2010 will provide even more in the next version.  If you haven’t spent much time on search strategy planning, now is the perfect time to learn!

 John Ross is a SharePoint MVP and Senior Consultant with SharePoint911, a Rackspace company. John is co-author of the books, “Professional SharePoint 2010 Branding and User Interface Design” and the upcoming “Real World SharePoint 2010: Indispensable Experiences from 23 SharePoint MVPs.” Visit his blog at http://johnrossjr.wordpress.com or on twitter at http://twitter.com/johnrossjr