I have a crawled property ows_Place. I set up an OOTB refinable string property to use this, RefinableString01. I do a full crawl, and can then execute the following query successfully:

RefinableString01:"Germany"

which returns several hundred results.

However, I am not keen on using the OOTB managed properties simply because their names are vague and also we will have more than 100 string properties. So I created my own managed property, CompanyPlace, setting this up exactly the same as the RefinableString01 property. I did a full crawl. However, when executing the following query

CompanyPlace:"Germany"

I only get two results back.

I thought maybe this was something specific to the ows_Places crawled property, so I tried the same thing with another crawled property, ows_BusinessSegment. The OOTB refinable string returned many results, the custom one I created returned none!

Is there something special about the OOTB refinable managed properties that I am missing? I have looked at every setting and they all match in both managed properties.

• Edited by Heley Thursday, May 28, 2015 12:42 PM

If the two managed properties are truly the same, these searches really should return the same result set.  Your expectations are accurate.  Given that they're not, here are the things I would do next:

1. Compare the settings of each managed property and ensure they both have the same crawled properties mapped to them.
2. Run a full crawl on all content sources <<< THIS!!!
3. Execute these searches again in the same search center at the same scope

I missed out one of the content sources, thanks. One of those "staring me in the face but didn't see it" moments. :)

• Edited by Heley Friday, May 29, 2015 9:54 AM