Working with Advanced Queries in the Live Search Box

So, now that you’ve (a) provisioned a Live Search Box for your site, and (b) updated it with a cool look and feel, you are finally ready to build the search query of your dreams.

Back in the old days, search boxes generally gave you two options: (1) search the whole Web or (2) search only your site. With the advanced query parameters of Live Search, you now have complete control to search the subset of the Web you define, and get the results that you are looking for.
Let’s take a look at several scenarios (posted here on MSDN)

• Searching a predefined set of URLs. For example, if you would like to constrain the search to your Web site, or a specific group of Web sites.
• Using a predefined search macro. For example, if you would like to use one of the macros from the Live Gallery to power your search engine. Each of these macros is predefined to search a specific topic, such as health care, or something less academic, such as Britney Spears.
• Searching your Web site’s neighborhood. A new feature that lets you search a Web site and all the sites to which that Web site links. This could be really useful in a blog, where the author is recommending additional sites or news articles. If you really wanted to, you could include the sites that link to your Web site, too.
• Advanced search parameters. You can combine a few additional query parameters with the aforementioned scenarios to look for things such as specific file formats, RSS feeds, or results by language or country/region.

Try it out, let us know what you think.

-- Nathan Buggia, Live Search Marketer