SharePoint 2013 Search - Content Source

Introduction:

When you are installing the SharePoint 2013 server the SharePoint Configuration wizard will create a Search service application at that time. To verify whether a Search service application exists, go to the central admin and select application management then click Manage service applications the Search service will be available there.

Before we touch the Content Source we will see about how to create a Search Service application in SharePoint 2013.

Please follow the below configurations when you create search service applications,

  1. Create a domain user accounts
  2. Create a Search service application
  3. Configure the Search service application
  4. Configure the Search service application topology

Create Search Service application:

Go to the Central administration then click on Application Management then click the “Manage Service Applications".

Click on search service application from new service application list.

Enter all the details and it will take time to complete the process.Once service application has been created check the manage service application page and it look like below,

search

Then click the newly created service applicaton and it will redirect to the below page of service application to configure the search,

search
Below databases created by creation of Search service application.

  1. Administration database
  2. Analytics Reporting Database
  3. Crawl Database
  4. Link Database

And the search service application topology should be Right mark in green colour or else try to create a new one.

Content Source:

Create an additional content sources to specify other content to crawl and how the system should crawl that content,Use below Powershell script to create the Content source instead of creating manually,

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

  1. #Variables Declaration  
  2. $ContentSourceName= "Local SharePoint sites"  
  3. $ContentSourceType="SharePoint"  
  4. $ContnetSourceURL="http://gowtham.sharepoint.com"  
  5.   
  6. #Get the search service application  
  7.   
  8. $SearchSA = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication #-Identity "Search Service Application -gowtham"  
  9.    
  10.   
  11. $ContentSource = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -SearchApplication $SearchSA | where {$_.Name -eq $ContentSourceName}  
  12. if ($ContentSource)  
  13. {  
  14.     write-host "Content Source Name already available!" -f Red  
  15.     exit  
  16. }  
  17.    
  18. #New content source  
  19. $ContentSource = New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -SearchApplication $SearchSA -Type $ContentSourceType `  
  20.           -name $ContentSourceName -StartAddresses $ContnetSourceURL -MaxSiteEnumerationDepth 0  
  21.    
  22. write-host "Content Source has been created!" -f Green  
  23.   
  24. #use below script to delete the content source in sharepoint  
  25. #Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -SearchApplication $SearchSA -Identity $ContentSourceNames  

Below default content source available in sharepoint.

search
After you created schedule the crawl ,

crawl

Yes! Content source successfully created in SharePoint . 

Then create a Search site collection to check  the Content Source and how it is working in search! Happy Learning.....

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