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The Quick Guide to Improving Intranet Search

Intranet users often feel frustrated with their search experience, and it's easy to see why. Most people are accustomed to finding information in seconds with Google or Bing. Fortunately, your intranet search doesn’t have to fall short!
By Omnia Coach

Anders Fagerlund

Gothenburg, Sweden

CONTENT IN THIS ARTICLE

Search

Looking for ways to improve intranet findability? This quick guide to intranet search tools offers 14 practical strategies to enhance the experience—covering everything from search box placement and AI suggestions to analytics and federated search.

Employees often expect search results to be as fast and intuitive as Google or Bing. If your intranet search does not meet expectations, these tips will help you deliver reliable results—boosting productivity, satisfaction, and overall digital workplace performance.

To learn more, download this guide: Mastering Intranet Search – the Comprehensive guide to a Great Search Experience.

14 Tips on How to Improve the Intranet Search Experience

Below are actionable ways to optimize your intranet search experience—helping employees quickly find people, documents, and knowledge with minimal frustration.

1. Improve Intranet Search with Smart Information Architecture

Improving intranet search begins with a solid information architecture. Planning your search experience around this architecture is crucial. It helps you determine relevant areas when creating search categories and deciding on search refiners.

2. Place the Search Box Where Users Expect It

One of the first questions to consider is where to place the search box. The most common option is in the top banner, either as a visible box or as a search icon. Alternatively, you might place it on the start page, but it's a good idea to have an icon in the top banner for easy access from any location within the intranet.

3. Use “Search as You Type” for Faster Results

Many intranet search experiences provide results in a drop-down list or search panel. Aim to show around ten results to avoid scrolling. Activating “search as you type” helps users see suggested results before they've finished typing their query.

4. Add “Did You Mean” Suggestions for Misspelled Queries

To assist users who misspell search terms, activate the “did you mean” functionality. This small addition can significantly improve the search experience.

5. Guide Users with Intranet Search Categories

If users don’t find what they're looking for, guide them to advanced search options. Here, search categories can help narrow the scope to specific areas, like people, teams, or news articles—but feel free to include more categories if it enhances the experience and supports better intranet findability.

6. Boost Findability with Search Refiners

For each search category, include refiners that help users narrow down results. These should relate to your organization, such as document types, product groups, or locations. Having two or three refiners per category is common, but feel free to include more if it enhances the experience.

Intranet search interface showing multiple categories and refiners to filter search results effectively.

Image 1: Search experience with customized categories and refiners to help end-users narrow search results.

7. Use Feedback to Improve Search Accuracy

Regularly improving the search experience is essential. Appoint a search administrator and allow users to submit feedback on search results. This could include user comments and screenshots showing the results for specific search terms.

Intranet search results page with a feedback form allowing users to comment on search quality.

Image 2: Possibility to submit feedback on the search experience.

8. Highlight Key Content with Promoted Results

Promoted search results can enhance user experience by ensuring that certain content always appears at the top of the list. For instance, if someone searches for “sales,” the sales process page should consistently show up first.

Search results screen highlighting promoted content at the top of the list.

Image 3: Promoted search results helping end-users find content.

9. Track Search Analytics to Understand User Behavior

Studying search statistics is a powerful way to refine the search experience. Track common search terms to understand user needs, identify abandoned searches, and note terms that yield no results. This data can help the administrator make informed improvements.

Search analytics dashboard showing user behavior data like common searches and no-result terms.

Image 4: Monitoring search metrics as top queries, abandoned queries, and no result queries.

10. Create Search Apps for High-Value Use Cases

Consider enhancing the search experience by setting up search scopes as stand-alone applications. These should focus on areas important to your organization, like finding colleagues, business documents, or products.

Custom intranet application interface for finding employees by name, role, or department.

Image 5: A stand-alone intranet search app - Find Colleague.

11. Optimize Intranet Search for Mobile and Teams

Don’t forget about the search experience on devices beyond web browsers. Prioritize configuring search functionality in Microsoft Teams and mobile devices, especially the intranet mobile app.

12. Enable Federated Search Across Business Systems

Over time, consider adding the ability to search within business systems or databases. Using Microsoft 365 options, you can include various data sources in your intranet search, such as on-premises file shares, SQL databases, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. Federated search can significantly improve usability and bring added value to employees, even if it’s not part of your initial search implementation.

13. Use AI-powered Search for Best Search Experience

To successfully improve the intranet search experience, we recommend the implementation of AI-powered semantic search, allowing users to ask natural language queries and getting high-quality answers with content references back. This will add a new addition to your intranet and to the user experience!

Intranet search experience enhanced with AI-powered semantic search providing natural languages answer and reference to content.

Image 6: AI-powered semantic search on implemented on intranet start page.

14. Ensure Quality Content for Better Search Results

Lastly, ensure your content is well-maintained. Use clear titles on web pages and craft page summaries that help users understand the purpose of each page when they see it in search results.

Start Improving Intranet Search Today

Improving intranet search is one of the most effective ways to boost productivity, reduce employee frustration, and enhance the overall digital workplace experience. A well-optimized search function empowers employees to quickly locate the documents, tools, and insights they need—cutting down on wasted time and supporting better decision-making.

By implementing the strategies outlined above—from better architecture and refiners to analytics, mobile readiness, and federated search—you’ll transform your intranet into a more powerful, intelligent, and user-friendly solution. The result? Happier users, smoother workflows, and a more valuable intranet that earns its place at the center of your digital workplace.

Want to dive deeper into search best practices? Watch our on-demand webinar Improving Intranet Search or download the guide Mastering Intranet Search - The Comprehensive Guide to a Great Search Experience for more hands-on tips and solution examples.

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