Can I search for SharePoint metadata?

Question

When I use the Search.asmx web service, it will not let me search for MetaData. Is there any way I can do this?

Below is what I have so far used for my request, but every time it is run it is in error InvalidPropertyException.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<QueryPacket xmlns="urn:Microsoft.Search.Query" Revision="1000">
<Query domain="QDomain">
 <SupportedFormats><Format>urn:Microsoft.Search.Response.Document.Document</Format></SupportedFormats>
 <Context>
   <QueryText language="en-US" type="MSSQLFT">
     <![CDATA[ SELECT Title, Rank, Size, Description, Write, Path FROM portal..scope() WHERE  "Published" = 'Yes'  ORDER BY "Rank" DESC ]]>
   </QueryText>
 </Context>
 <Range><StartAt>1</StartAt><Count>20</Count></Range>
 <EnableStemming>false</EnableStemming>
 <TrimDuplicates>true</TrimDuplicates>
 <IgnoreAllNoiseQuery>true</IgnoreAllNoiseQuery>
 <ImplicitAndBehavior>true</ImplicitAndBehavior>
 <IncludeRelevanceResults>true</IncludeRelevanceResults>
 <IncludeSpecialTermResults>true</IncludeSpecialTermResults>
 <IncludeHighConfidenceResults>true</IncludeHighConfidenceResults>
</Query></QueryPacket>

Answer 1

You cannot just search for an arbitrary metadata column, you need to make sure that it is first scanned and becomes available under a reasonable name (managed property). See this blog post for an example.

Also, if the publication is logical, I think you can try "Published" = 1 instead of "yes."