Before users can use the enterprise search functionality in Search Server 2008 to search for content, the content must first be crawled so that it is available for users to query. Content is any item that can be crawled, such as a Web page, a Microsoft Office Word document, or a SharePoint site. For more information, see How to crawl content (Search Server 2008).

The following topics provide information on specific tasks when crawling content:

• Preparing to crawl content (Search Server 2008) — Prepare to crawl content after you have identified the content sources.

• Crawl content (Search Server 2008) — Set up full and incremental crawls, and then schedule them to occur automatically.

• Limit or increase the quantity of content that is crawled (Search Server 2008) — Update the quantity of content being crawled by using crawl rules, crawl settings in content sources, and file type inclusions.

• Manage crawler impact (Search Server 2008) —Add or edit crawler impact rules to reduce the load on servers that are being crawled and improve response time for users of that server.

• Configure how the crawler authenticates (Search Server 2008) — Specify or change a content access account for the crawler to authenticate to servers that hosts content.

• Install protocol handlers (Search Server 2008) — Install and configure the protocol handler to crawl Lotus Notes.

Federation enables users to issue a query that searches multiple sources and displays results in separate Web Parts on a single search results page. For more information, see Working with federation (Search Server 2008).