Microsoft Search – Create and Manage Search Verticals

The creation and management of search verticals in Microsoft Search are now available, but what is a search vertical and how do you create them?

A search vertical is a way of showing results of a specific type or from a configured set of sources. For example, the built in Files vertical shows results that are classified as files/documents and hence if users were just interested in looking for documents that match their search text they can click the Files vertical.

Search verticals can be managed and created at two levels;

• Organisational level – this vertical will appear at the organisational level when users search from SharePoint start page, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Search in Bing
• Site level – this vertical will appear at the site level on the search results page when users search from a SharePoint site.

The good news with search verticals is that like most configuration in Microsoft 365 it is wizard driven. The wizard guides the user through a series of steps that allows the vertical name, the content source and the scope of the content to search to be defined. Additionally, for those from a SharePoint background, the use of the Keyword Query Language (KQL) to scope the vertical is supported.

Create and manage organisational level verticals

1. Navigate to the Microsoft 365 admin center
2. Go to the Verticals page, which is location under Settings->Search & intelligence->Customizations->Verticals
3. Select an existing vertical to edit it or by clicking add to create a new vertical
4. Select/amend the Content Source
5. Add in the Query using KQL
6. Add in any relevant filters held in the Search Schema
7. Review it and enable the filter (it can take a few hours before it appears)

Create and manage site level verticals

1. In a SharePoint site, open up the settings panel by clicking the gear.
2. Select Site Information and then View all site settings
3. Click Configure search settings within the Microsoft Search section
4. Select the Verticals tab
5. Select an existing vertical to edit it or by clicking add to create a new vertical
6. Select/Amend the Content Source
7. Add in the Query using KQL
8. Add in any relevant filters held in the Search Schema
9. Review it and enable the filter (it can take a few hours before it appears)

So for example, after creating a search vertical “Knowledge Hub” and adding a “Category” filter, the Microsoft Search experience becomes:

If you can’t wait for the couple hours before it becomes available fro users append cacheClear=true to the URL in SharePoint and Office to view the vertical immediately. For example : https://<tenant.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx?q=*&v=%2Fsearch&cacheClear=true

And that’s it. Further updates are scheduled in the near future including; custom filters on native verticals and custom result types for SharePoint content.