# Search Technique Enhancements

## Enhanced Search Results in Responsive Layouts

The author can now choose whether to open the search results in the main Topic pane, or the Navigation Sidebar.

This is accomplished by selecting "true" in the Responsive Layout Customization Editor shown here.

## Author-Customized Search Context

The Search Context (the text under the Topic Title) can be customized by the author. The default is a short amount of the first paragraph to give the reader a sense of what the topic is about.

## Improving Search Ranking

One way to help your users find the most relevant results is with the Search Ranking capabilities Adobe RoboHelp. For WebHelp or WebHelp Pro, the author can control whether or not the Search Ranking column in the Search Results is presented.

To disable Search Ranking, examine the properties of the WebHelp or WebHelp Pro single source layouts and ensure the option labeled Hide Rank Column in Search Results is enabled.

Search Ranking is influenced by a number of factors including this hierarchy:

Search Keyword(s) appear in this order of importance:

1. Title of a topic

2. Topic Keyword - this is very powerful. (See Keywords on the General tab of Topic Properties)

3. Headings 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (in that order)

4. Number of times in topic text

5. Project Synonyms created from Output Tab > Synonyms.

## Support for AND search

By default, RoboHelp performs OR searches when a user types multiple words without enclosing them in quotation marks. This means that RoboHelp finds all topics that have any of the words specified in the Search box. The end user may want to limit the search where specific words occur in the same topic. This can now be done with the new AND Search feature.

AND Examples:

Image AND photo finds topics containing both terms.

Image AND photo AND graphic finds records containing all three terms.

Enabling this feature for WebHelp and WebHelp Pro:

In the output settings, you can specify whether or not AND search should be enabled by default. In addition, when AND search is supported in the output, end users have the option to enable or disable it. For WebHelp and WebHelp Pro, select the Show AND Search In Output option in the output settings, RoboHelp performs AND search when a user types multiple words without enclosing them in quotation marks. Then, RoboHelp finds only the topics that have all the words specified in the Search box. AND search can be used in combination with phrase search.

To enable AND Search in Multiscreen HTML5 Screen Layouts place a Multiscreen HTML5 Widget - "Advanced Search Options" into your screen layout.

## External Content Search metadata provides access to user-generated content

The help author may now be a "curator" of content that guides the end-user more precisely to the most relevant material. Today, help systems go beyond static help files. There are blogs, wikis, and other Web 2.0 communities that are happy to share information whether it relates to work or play. Your end-users may tap into this rich and dynamic repository to find information as well as contribute to the body of information themselves.

This is accomplished by using External Content Search. This makes it easy to enter the search metadata. The author may create keywords that are linked to a URL. When the end user uses RoboHelp's search facility and searches for these keywords, the links are listed among the search results and ranked in the top position. The resulting link presents a live site inside the topic pane.

Notice the Conditional Build Tag "Draft" has been added to the Travelocity search term.

## What the External Content Search feature does

Example Scenario: An author wants to make it convenient for users to make travel arrangements. The company wants certain travel sites to come up in the search results for certain keywords that users may enter, such as

Sales Funnel Expedia Xpedia xpeedia | Travel Travelocity Orbitz Orbits

You can create a Google Advanced Search of a specific term (or terms) then capture the URL from the address bar of the browser and use this URL in order to allow pre-populating of a Google search. If you open the External Content Search pod you can see this in action and note how the terms are associated with the link. The External Content Search keywords cause the associated Link to rank at the number one position.

## How to see the External Content Search feature in action

Generate one of the supported outputs with the External Content Search feature enabled.

The supported outputs for this feature are:

1. - Multiscreen HTML5

   - Responsive HTML5

   - WebHelp

   - WebHelp Pro

   - FlashHelp

   - FlashHelp Pro

View the output.

Perform a search using one of the search terms programmed in the External Content Search dialog.

Click one of the resulting search result links.

## Searching documents in their file native formats

Sometimes, a file must remain in its native format. So files such as PDFs, Docs, Spreadsheets and PowerPoints can be added to your project and be searchable. RoboHelp calls these "Baggage" files because they "go along for the ride" when you publish your project. Now you have your choice to include or exclude those baggage file types. This includes support for CJK (Chinese / Japanese / Korean) search as well.