After filing this as a bug the first time in November 2015, as of February 6th 2017 the fix for searching for Internet shortcuts (LNK and URL files) placed in the start menu is here at last! Now when doing a search in all Windows 10 editions (1511, 1607 and the latest and upcoming Red Stone 2 build a.k.a. “Creators Update”) internet shortcuts (i.e. links to web applications) are returned in the search results as one would expect.

There are a few things to note though:

  1. The change is done by the Bing team and it is a server side update. This means the search components are updated in the background automatically, unless you are blocking silent updates.
  2. Only LNK and URL files that are placed in the start menu are returned in search. That is C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs or C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.
  3. You must make sure the GPO “Don’t search the web or display the web results in Search” is set to “Disabled” or “Not configured” (located in Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Search).

Thank you Microsoft!