Result Sources in SharePoint 2013/2016

A typical scenario in SharePoint is to limit the results on a search page to specific content. SharePoint 2013 introduces the concept of Results Sources. It was called as Search scopes in SharePoint 2010 version. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a custom Result Source in a SharePoint 2013/2016 Environment.

SharePoint 2013 Result Sources can be created at three different levels:

• Search Service Application
• Site collection
• Site

SharePoint 2013 providing 16 predefined result sources.

Local SharePoint Results is the pre-configured default search resource. We can specify our result sources as default.

You need to have Site collection Administrator permissions for the site collection and Site owner permissions for a site.

Step 1:
Open SharePoint Online admin center and navigate to Manage Result Sources from Search Settings.

Result Sources in SharePoint 2013

Step 2:
Select New Result Source and a new page will appear.

create result source sharepoint online

Step 3:
Provide General Information such as Name, Description for the newly generated search results. The Protocol should be Local SharePoint.

create result source sharepoint 2013

Step 4:
Click on Launch Query Builder.

Result Sources in SharePoint 2010

Step 5:
In the Query Text, provide the source of the search to confine your search results.

Result Sources in SharePoint 2013

Step 6:
The updated Query text value to search values only from the list items are shown below.

SharePoint 2013 result sources

Step 7:
The newly created Result source is depicted as shown below. You can assign this to the search result web part to refine your search results.

result source in SharePoint 2013

You may like following SharePoint 2013 search tutorials:

• Create a result source and use custom result source in content search web part in SharePoint online Office 365
• Create SharePoint 2013 Online Search Result Sources and attach to Search Result page
• How to define Search scopes in SharePoint 2013 Using Result Sources?
• How to customize search results look by using result types and display templates in SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2016/2013?
• Draft items not appearing in search results in SharePoint 2013
• Create a custom search result page and add custom search result page to SharePoint Online Search Center
• Search People as a Search Scope or Content Source Using SharePoint 2013 REST API
• Calling SharePoint Search Using REST from JavaScript
• How to set Search Center URL in SharePoint Online Office 365 using JavaScript Object Model?

Hope this article will be helpful to know about result sources in SharePoint 2013, how to create a custom result source in SharePoint 2013/2016 or SharePoint Online.

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