Is it safe to omit site collections and web applications from the sharepoint content sources?

Leonard Franklin 41 Reputation points
2022-05-10T23:05:03.117+00:00

Hello everyone,
When crawling content in SharePoint, if I have a site collection or web application that I don't want crawled at all (and doesn't get searched such as a web application for testing), can I just leave it out of the Content Sources, or is it a better practice to enter it into content sources and then exclude it in crawl rules?

Microsoft 365 and Office | SharePoint Server | For business
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  1. Yi Lu_MSFT 17,616 Reputation points
    2022-05-12T09:35:30.503+00:00

    Hi @Leonard Franklin
    Yes, both methods are safe. You could choose one method according to your own preferences.


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  1. sadomovalex 3,636 Reputation points
    2022-05-19T14:26:17.753+00:00

    in addition to removing web app from content sources - check may be it is also needed to configure permissions there in the way that users won't be able to access it even if they know direct url. Btw this second method will also remove web app from search results because search is security trimmed in Sharepoint.

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