Creating Search Centers

Search centers are the web pages that provide for the search user interface most often used in SharePoint. They can be created in an easy way, and they provide a full query and result displaying capabilities.

There are three types of search centers in SharePoint 2010:

• A Basic Search Center is a simple site for delivering search functionality. It includes pages for search results and advanced search.

• An Enterprise Search Center is a more complex site with more pages and a better user experience. Its pages are organized into tabs that can be easily accessed by the users. By default, there are two tabs on the welcome page: one for the general search results and one for the people results. Site administrators can add more pages and tabs, regarding to the current search requirements. There is also a way to create different pages and tabs for the different scopes so that they can be defined as a Target URL for the searches of each scope.

• A FAST Search Center is the search site providing the rich FAST Search experience. The site’s content is similar to the Enterprise Search Center but with richer capabilities that take advantage of FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010.

If you want to create a site for any type of search center, perform the following steps:

1. Go to the site where you want to create the search center. Open the Site Actions menu, and select New Site.
2. Filter the site templates for search on the left navigation bar.
3. Select the type of the search center you want to deploy: Basic, Enterprise, or FAST Search Center.
4. Type the Title and URL of the search center on the right side.
5. Click More Options if you want to set the Description of the new search center, or configure the permissions or navigation inheritance.
6. After selecting the necessary settings, click Create, and the new search center will be ready to use immediately.