Sitecore Lucene index - sitecore

Question

We've recently deployed to a clients environment and we're not seeing news items - these are found using a Lucene search based on a template id
I can only think that Lucene isn’t finding them.. I’ve rebuilt the search indexes and we're definitely search for the right templates.
Im thinking the news isn’t being included in found items by Lucene. I cant see anything in Sitecore.SharedSource.Search.config that is preventing results from being returned. The search index is working for other items (we use it for menus for instance).
Any ideas? I should add that we have added our sitecore site to an existing project, developed externally, and there may be library code/configuration that we're not currently aware of exactly what it's doing!
Here's the configuaratioon for the index from Sitecore.SharedSource.Search.config
<index id="advancedmaster" type="Sitecore.Search.Index, Sitecore.Kernel">
<param desc="name">$(id)</param>
<param desc="folder">advanced_master</param>
<Analyzer ref="search/analyzer" />
<locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
<master type="Sitecore.SharedSource.Search.Crawlers.AdvancedDatabaseCrawler,Sitecore.SharedSource.Search">
<Database>master</Database>
<Root>/sitecore/content</Root>
<IndexAllFields>true</IndexAllFields>
<include hint="list:ExcludeField">
<!-- __revision field -->
<fieldId>{8CDC337E-A112-42FB-BBB4-4143751E123F}</fieldId>
<!-- __context menu field -->
<fieldId>{D3AE7222-425D-4B77-95D8-EE33AC2B6730}</fieldId>
<!-- __security field -->
<fieldId>{DEC8D2D5-E3CF-48B6-A653-8E69E2716641}</fieldId>
<!-- __renderings field -->
<fieldId>{F1A1FE9E-A60C-4DDB-A3A0-BB5B29FE732E}</fieldId>
</include>
<fieldCrawlers hint="raw:AddFieldCrawlers">
<fieldCrawler type="Sitecore.SharedSource.Search.FieldCrawlers.LookupFieldCrawler,Sitecore.SharedSource.Search" fieldType="Droplink" />
<fieldCrawler type="Sitecore.SharedSource.Search.FieldCrawlers.DateFieldCrawler,Sitecore.SharedSource.Search" fieldType="Datetime" />
<fieldCrawler type="Sitecore.SharedSource.Search.FieldCrawlers.DateFieldCrawler,Sitecore.SharedSource.Search" fieldType="Date" />
<fieldCrawler type="Sitecore.SharedSource.Search.FieldCrawlers.NumberFieldCrawler,Sitecore.SharedSource.Search" fieldType="Number" />
</fieldCrawlers>
<!-- If a field type is not defined, defaults of storageType="NO", indexType="UN_TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" are applied-->
<fieldTypes hint="raw:AddFieldTypes">
<!-- Text fields need to be tokenized -->
<fieldType name="single-line text" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="multi-line text" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="word document" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="html" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="rich text" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="memo" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="text" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<!-- Multilist based fields need to be tokenized to support search of multiple values -->
<fieldType name="multilist" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="treelist" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="treelistex" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<fieldType name="checklist" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
<!-- Legacy tree list field from ver. 5.3 -->
<fieldType name="tree list" storageType="NO" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" />
</fieldTypes>
</master>
</locations>
</index>

Answer 1

The problem was we still had workflow enabled on these news items (we want it off for testing) .. and the parent item was in a state that needed reviewing so it didn't appear in the search results.
Thanks for your suggestions - all adding to the sea of knowledge !

Answer 2

Are you accidentally excluding a template instead of including a template?
<include hint="list:ExcludeTemplate">
<template>ID HERE</template>
</include>
or
<include hint="list:IncludeTemplate">
<template>ID HERE</template>
</include>
You could also be incorrectly listing your templates. Each need to have a different name.
<include hint="list:IncludeTemplate">
<news>NEWS ID HERE</news>
<event>EVENT ID HERE</event>
</include>