SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide

Administering Search Services

Administration of Search services can be a daunting task. The larger the server deployment, and the more content stored, the harder things become. Ideally, administration and configuration should be a task for a broad team, and could potentially include application architects, server and network operators, SharePoint administrators, and analysts and information workers. The majority of the administrative elements begin at the SharePoint Operations Center during the initial configuration of the portal and the Shared Services Provider (SSP), and then move onto the individual Web Applications and Site Collections. Options that are configured during the initial setup of the farm are accessible from the Manage Search Service page within the Application Management section, which is covered later in "Advanced Configuration Options."

Tip

When initially installed, MOSS does not automatically crawl any content; crawls have to be initiated manually, or scheduled via the Content Sources and Crawl Schedules page.

Assuming that an SSP has already been configured in a farm, the bulk of the Search configuration lies in the Configure Search Settings Page, as seen in Figure 27-10.

Figure 27-10. Search Settings page

Key Search Crawl Settings properties and action pages that can be managed are listed in Table 27-9.

Table 27-9. Search Crawl settings

Crawl setting	Description and ...