So another minor post about search. Last post I explained the use of metadata property mappings, and their strength allowing you to show more information without a lot of changes. However I forgot to mention the fact that u can actually show them pretty easy in your existing search results.
Assuming you created your Metadata properties you can go to your search page, the XSLT of your resultswebpart to:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xmp><xsl:copy-of select="*"/></xmp>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
(More info on that on a previous post on this blog) .
Next step will be a minor change in Results Query Options, here you will have a property for Selected Columns, editing it will show you the normal columns used in your search results before the end </Columns> you can easily add a new <Column Name=”YourMetaDataProperty” />. By using the above XLST you can save the page search, and check real-time whether your column exists and contains information.
You might have to play with capitalization a bit, ‘cause sometimes the column name differs from the metadata property.