Search results not getting refined using multi refinement sharepoint online

Question

I have added refinement web part and selected multi refinement.

When I give the refiner value which has symbol('-') in other value text box results are not getting refined.If i check the same refiner value check box ,results are getting refined.Anyone can help on this why this is happening.

Answer 1

This is because - (minus or hyphen) is a special symbol/token in SharePoint search.

Special characters such as comma (","), semicolon (";"), colon (":"), underscore ("_"), minus ("-"), or forward slash ("/") are treated as white space. This is related to the tokenization process in SharePoint search query processing.

All the OOB values from Refinement web part works fine because they all converted to hex values. If you see them how they are sending to server when you refining, they all has hex values.

For example, if you convert praveen-battula then it becomes ǂǂ7072617665656e2d62617474756c61

Whereas ǂǂ is the special two characters which tells SharePoint that it is hex value.

When it comes to your problem, I believe "Other Value" field is not converted to hex code (I need to test). If this is not working as expected in OOB web parts then it is a problem in SP product itself.

-Praveen.