January 16, 2026

Before ChatGPT began disrupting the market, enterprise search was the most important tool for retrieving knowledge in large organizations. This means that when using the search box within the intranet, users were directed to an enterprise-internal search engine, which indexes the most important knowledge sources of the enterprise.

Excellent and frequently used search engines in the 2010s were Microsoft SharePoint (2013 or 2016), Squirro, Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, Lucidworks Fusion, Google Search Appliance (GSA) or, since around 2017, Google Cloud Search.

Microsoft Search

Now, as more and more enterprises were moving from SharePoint on-premises to M365, there was the need to have such an enterprise search directly in M365.

Thus, in 2019 Microsoft Search with Graph Connectors was born. Since then, third party sources, including permission concepts, could be indexed in M365. In turn, when searching in SharePoint Online or in the Office home dialogs, all enterprise results were brought up.

For the user, this means that when searching in SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365, all relevant results from the company, and not just from M365, will be found.

Microsoft Copilot

Today Microsoft Search is the RAG foundation for Microsoft Copilot. If licensed Copilot users ask questions, then this way Copilot in particular takes third party contents into account.

Microsoft Search Today

On the other hand, also a traditional search interface exist and is prominently integrated in the M365 Copilot dialog at https://m365.cloud.microsoft/chat. It serves as a classical enterprise search which does not generate answers but offers matching documents via a traditional keyword search.

Now, Why Does this Still Matter?

Within our blog post Why Classical Search Often Still Matters we explain for which use cases blue link searches are very important, even today.

But, first of all, Microsoft Search is licensed as part of Office 365 and does not need an additional license. So all users, also those who do not have a Copilot “pro” license, can use it.

It moreover offers indexing third party sources, for instance with Microsoft-built connectors or with our Retrieval Suite. Indexing third party sources is available for all organizations and as of today does not come with additional Microsoft licensing cost.

Therefore, besides Copilot, Microsoft Search is a highly cost-effective enterprise search and a great single point of entry for your organization-wide knowledge. Apparantly, the main issue of Microsoft Search still is that many users do not know that it exists and thus do not use it for their needs.

The Only Drawback

In our experience Microsoft Search continues to struggle with an old issue. Actually, the same problem many enterprise search applications had over the last decades.

Actually, many users are asking for such an enterprise search. But they don't know where it resides. And if they do, administrators often did not yet connect important company knowledge to it. Although this is an extremely easy, secure and quick task with our Retrieval Suite.