SharePoint search not working [Fixed]: Full crawler is running but no items are shown in content source crawl log – SharePoint 2016

SharePoint search not working – sometimes, while we troubleshoot the SharePoint on-premise search issue we might see that the full crawler for a given content source is being run successfully, however, if we wait for hours we will not find any items being crawled or the content source crawler log will not show any error.

Root cause and how to fix this issue – SharePoint search not working?

Here I am keeping my analysis short, lets’s open the content source for the given web application in edit mode, and note down the web application in the notepad.

Now, open the IIS from the WFE (Web Front End) server, and navigate to the web application that you have noted down. There you will see that the URL Rewrite rule is applied for that application, which will redirect the URL to some other URL once the user accesses the main web application URL.

In order to fix this issue, disable the URL rewrite rule in IIS for time being (before starting the full crawl) for the said web application and once the full crawler gets completed, enable the URL rewrite back for the web application in IIS. This is how this issue will be fixed.

Summary: SharePoint search not working

Thus, in this article, we have learned how to fix the issue when the full crawler does not crawl any items in SharePoint 2016, even though it runs successfully and how to deal with the URL Rewrite in IIS.

See Also: SharePoint search not working

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