When you start search services on the farm using central administration, you will notice two Search services. Namely, Office SharePoint Server Search and Windows SharePoint Services Help Search. You need to turn on both of them for a complete server configuration. Immediately, a question flashes in your mind.
Why to start two SharePoint Search services? The answer can be found in below snippet from TechNet;
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides two search services: Office SharePoint Server Search and Windows SharePoint Services Help Search. Each of these services can be used to crawl, index, and query content, and each service uses a separate index.
The Office SharePoint Server Search service is based on the search service that is provided with earlier versions of SharePoint Products & Technologies, but with many improvements. You should use the Office SharePoint Server Search service to crawl and index all content that you want to be searchable (other than the Help system).
The Windows SharePoint Services Help Search service is the same service provided by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, although in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 it is called the Windows SharePoint Services Search service. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 uses this service to index site content, index Help content, and serve queries.
As its name implies, in Office SharePoint Server 2007 the purpose of the Windows SharePoint Services Help Search service is to enable searching of the Help system that is built into Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Because the Windows SharePoint Services Help Search service uses an index that is separate from the other search service, users’ queries in the Search box for the Help system return hits for only Help content. If you do not want users to be able to search the Help system, you do not need to start this service.
Hope this also helps on understanding the basic difference between both the services.
Clear. Thanks Jag.
Phil
Comment by Phil Shisbey — September 19, 2007 @ 8:17 pm
Hi
The explanation is awesome
Anu
Comment by Anu — October 25, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
I get no results when im performing a search in wss3.0, and I only have the Windows SharePoint Services Help Search in my list…
should I have both? “Windows SharePoint Services Help Search” and “Windows SharePoint Search Services”
Comment by elpres — February 7, 2008 @ 9:48 am
Hi Elpres,
if you read it clearly it says, “Windows SharePoint Services Help Search service is the same service provided by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, although in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 it is called the Windows SharePoint Services Search service”.
check if the WSS Search service is started on the server.
Jag
Comment by Jag — February 7, 2008 @ 11:05 pm
explanation is pick from here
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179334(TechNet.10).aspx
Comment by pankaj — July 2, 2008 @ 4:36 am
Pankaj,
Thanks for the link!
Jag
Comment by Jag — July 2, 2008 @ 10:09 am
[...] Why two SharePoint Search services?: Jag explains why MOSS has two Search services [...]
Pingback by Newly Noted #20 | Patrick Verbruggen's Blog — February 26, 2009 @ 4:52 am
Actualy, when search is not configured at all on a newly installed MOSS2007 environment and when you start configuring the services on server for the first time, then there are both the Office SharePoint Server Search and Windows SharePoint Services Search in the list of services. After the Windows SharePoint Services Search is configured for the first time it’s name is changed to Windows SharePoint Services Help Search.
Ik think this is quite confusing.
Comment by Erik van der Veen — April 17, 2009 @ 8:46 pm
I have noticed in my farm that on the Index Server this is called “Windows SharePoint Services Help Search” and on my Web Front End machines it is called “Windows SharePoint Services Search”. Do you know why there is this discrepency? I have also noticed that on some one farm when I create a web app that it says that seach will be provided by the Office server search and on another farm I am prompted to select which server will search, just as in WSS3.0
Comment by Don Bruce — April 25, 2009 @ 12:06 am
Do we need to start both of these search services for better search functionality?
What is the rationale?
Comment by Pradeep Narsimhula — July 15, 2009 @ 1:27 am
If we don’t need to start the Help service in MOSS, where would you specify the content access acount as it seems to be only in the Help service not the the main search service.
Comment by Ali — July 30, 2009 @ 4:28 am