Manage the Search Center in SharePoint Server

APPLIES TO: yes-img-132013 yes-img-162016 yes-img-192019 yes-img-seSubscription Edition no-img-sopSharePoint in Microsoft 365

In a Search Center site, users get the classic search experience. When you create an Enterprise Search Center site collection as described in Create a Search Center site in SharePoint Server, SharePoint Server creates a default search home page and a default search results page. In addition, several pages known as search verticals are created. Search verticals are customized for searching specific content, such as People, Conversations, and Videos, and they display search results that are filtered and formatted for a specific content type or class.

The following pages are created in an Enterprise Search Center site collection:

  • default.aspx: the home page for the Search Center, and the page where end-users enter their queries.

  • results.aspx: the default search results page for the Search Center. It is also the search results page for the Everything search vertical.

  • peopleresults.aspx: the search results page for the People search vertical.

  • conversationresults.aspx: the search results page for the Conversations search vertical.

  • videoresults.aspx: the search results page for the Videos search vertical.

  • advanced.aspx: the search page where end-users can apply some restrictions to their search phrases — for example, limiting the search to an exact phrase.

These pages are located in the Pages library, and they contain Web Parts that you can customize to improve the end-user search experience. This article describes the Web Parts on these pages, and how you can configure the different Web Parts settings to improve how search results are displayed.

By default, the Web Parts on the search vertical pages (results.aspx, peopleresults.aspx, conversationresults.aspx, videoresults.aspx, advanced.aspx) are the same. However the query in the Search Results Web Part is configured differently for each search vertical page. For each search vertical page, the query in the Search Results Web Part is directed to a particular result source. This can be a result source that defines the search vertical or any result source that you want to direct queries to when you create a custom search vertical. For example, for the peopleresults.aspx search vertical page, the query in the Search Results Web Part is limited to the Local People Results (System) result source. For the videoresults.aspx search vertical page, the query in the Search Results Web Part is limited to the Local Video Results (System).

The following articles describe how to configure properties for each Web Part that is used in the Enterprise Search Center site: