(cross-posted from: http://thespacecraft.spaces.live.com/ as this may be interesting for Dev folks - Rob)

Have you ever wondered… wow, there’s all of that stuff (blogs, photos, profiles, lists, etc.) in Spaces, but I just can’t find what I’m looking for using the Spaces Search?  Well, I’m writing to share the Secrets of Searching Spaces.  It may come as no surprise to you that the Search experience on Windows Live Spaces is powered by Live Search.  We’re actually just using some publicly available features of Live Search.

Search Spaces Blogs

For starters, let’s say that we want to search for Spaces blog entries that talk about a specific topic, for example “Ms Dewey.”  Of course you could go to Spaces to do your search, but this is about exposing the “Secrets of Searching Spaces” so let me show you how to do this using Live Search:
1. Go to Live Search (http://search.live.com)
2. Enter “Ms Dewey site:spaces.live.com meta:search.pt(blogs)”

Now I’ll explain:
· “Ms Dewey” are your standard keyword search terms
· The “site:” parameter scopes your search to URL’s that start with that site
· The “meta:” parameter tells Live Search to look for the meta word “search.pt” which contains “blogs.”  Other “search.pt” metawords that you can use are “spaces” and “people” for the front page of a user’s space and the profile page respectively.  Nikhil, who was the developer of our original Spaces Search experience tells me that “pt” stands for page type.

Search within a Space

One of the feature requests I hear from time-to-time is for the ability to search within a specific Windows Live Space.  This can be done using the site: parameter.  For example: “Ms Dewey site:robdolin.spaces.live.com meta:search.pt(blogs)” will search within my personal space for any blog entries about “Ms Dewey.” 

Search within a Market

Another “secret” is to use the meta word “search.market” to search for spaces in a specific language or from a specific market.  This uses market identifiers like “en-us” for English-USA or “fr-fr” for French-France.  Windows Live Spaces supports about 35 markets (and hopefully more soon J.) 

List of Meta Words

Below I have included a list of meta words that you can query on:
· search.pt – page type; values of “spaces,” “people,” and “blogs”
· search.st – space title; for example “Rob Dolin’s space”
· search.sa – space alias; for example “robdolin”
· search.market – the market code; for example: en-us, es-es, en-au, fr-fr

What’s Next

I hope you use the above “secrets” to search Spaces (or other data.)  You might even want to build a Gadget or other mash-up.  You can also access the data in Live Search by adding “&format=rss” to your search query or by using Live Search’s SOAP API’s.  On the Spaces team, we’re working to expose additional meta words.  If you do build a great Gadget or mash-up, please leave a comment about it with this post.

Happy searching—
--Rob