Create a custom search results page in SharePoint Online

One way to customize the search experience in SharePoint is to create a custom search results page for a site. A custom page allows you to use a page that you created, rather than the default in Microsoft Search results page. A custom page gives you more flexibility on how the search results experience looks for your users.

Note

To make changes to the default Microsoft Search results page that is available by default, please see Customize the search results page.

With a custom results page, you can create a new page that can be used to control the layout and design of search results to support your organization's needs. You can use any built-in web parts, open-source search web parts from SharePoint Patterns and Practices community, and any custom web parts that you have developed using SharePoint Framework.

Configure a results page

Follow the steps below to configure a custom results page in SharePoint:

1. Browse to the site where you would like to configure a custom results page and go to Site Settings > Site Collection Settings > Search Settings.

2. In Search Settings, clear selection from Use the same results page settings as my parent, choose Send queries to a custom results page, and provide a value for Results page URL:. Then, save your changes. The URL you use here should be for the page that you created to use as your custom results page, for example https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/search/SitePages/results.aspx. See this Microsoft Ignite session for a demo of this feature.

Note

The custom results page needs to be on the same domain as your site, but it does not have to be in the same site collection.  

Alternatively, you can use the Set-PnPSearchSettings SharePoint PnP PowerShell command to set the value instead of using the Site Settings page.

Once set, the custom search results page is displayed when you search using the Microsoft Search box that appears in the navigation bar on top of the page and is used when you enter search from site pages or the home page of the site. It is not used when you are searching within a list, library, or the site contents page. You may use the link to expand your search from search results in lists and libraries to get to the custom results page.

Change the layout of your custom results page

A page layout named HeaderlessSearchResults can be used to make the search results page appear closer to our out of box search results experience. This new layout can only be active for the pages that are set to be the custom search results page.

To set the page layout, you can use the Set-PnPPage PnP PowerShell command with -LayoutType HeaderlessSearchResults.

Use SharePoint Framework Query extensions

Custom search results pages can also make use of the SharePoint Framework Query Extension to modify the query before it gets sent to the search engine.

Guest user limitations

The scenario intent of inviting a guest to a SharePoint site or hub site is to share content from that scopes to the guest. A custom redirect to the organization wide search result page provided by Microsoft Search at _layouts/15/search.aspx without the /siteall parameter is an unsupported product scenario. Exposing guests to organization wide results can lead to unintended oversharing of content.

Also see Guest user limitations for Search box settings on SharePoint sites.

Additional resources

For open source projects, getting started with our Microsoft Search APIs, and more customization and extensibility samples, visit Microsoft Search on GitHub.