Hi Ayo,

Are you sure that your 'topicTags' property are indexed ?

Try to use something like ExamineManager for checking data returned form the Examine Index.

http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Reference/Searching/Examine/examine-manager

Thanks, Alex

yes, it is indexed, the reason why I was getting 0 was the tags are stored like this: tag1,tag2,tag3. With no spaces so tag1,tag2,tag3 would result in a hit, but tag1 wouldn't.

The solution was to hook in to the umbraco publish event and change the way that field is indexed. Solution below:

 public class ExamineEvents : ApplicationStartupHandler
{
    public ExamineEvents()
    {
        ExamineManager.Instance.IndexProviderCollection["ExternalIndexer"].GatheringNodeData +=
            ExamineEvents_GatheringNodeData;
    }


    private void ExamineEvents_GatheringNodeData(object sender, IndexingNodeDataEventArgs e)
    {
                    if (e.IndexType != IndexTypes.Content) return;

        // Node picker values are stored as csv which will not be indexed properly 
        // We need to write the values back into the index without commas so they are indexed correctly
        var fields = e.Fields;
        var searchableFields = new Dictionary<string, string>();
        foreach (var field in fields)
        {
            switch (field.Key)
            {
                case "topicTags":

                    var searchableFieldKey = "topicTagsIndexed";
                    var searchableFieldValue = field.Value.Replace(',', ' ');
                    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(searchableFieldValue))
                    {
                        searchableFields.Add(searchableFieldKey, searchableFieldValue);
                    }
                    break;
            }
        }

        foreach (var fld in searchableFields)
        {
            e.Fields.Add(fld.Key, fld.Value);
        }
    }

Then when you create your search query you search in the field topicTagsIndexed

SearchCriteria.Field("pagetitle", searchTerm).Or().Field("topicTagsIndexed", searchTerm).Compile();

Hope this helps someone else.

is working on a reply...