Smart Search Returning No Results

Hi,

Couple of things you can try:

1. Try to add a parameter NoResultsText="No results were found." in search result web part to check if it returns something.
2. Verify your Index name from Site Manager -> Administration -> Smart Search -> your index -> General tab -> Code name. Index name should be code name not display name in web part properties.

That could be a security issue.

I have the No Results were found text set up. This is what we get for anything entered in the search box "no results found".

Index code name is what is being used in the smart search with dialog web part configuration.

Check permissions is not enabled.

Thank you for the suggestions so far.

Try to see to if it works internally: i.e go to your index and try search preview. if preview works - then it is a problem with your smart search web parts configuration, if not - it's is an index problem.

What type of index are you using? Have you checked the content field in index files using Luke.net?

Luke.net is a tool that allow you to browse index. Download the files in folder "\CMS\App_Data\CMSModules\SmartSearch<indexname>\" to you local, then run Luke on this files and check fields.

I am using a pages crawler index. The analyzer types I have tried are simple and standard.

The search preview on the live site also returns a "No results found" response.

Is it possible that something outside of Kentico could be causing this? I think our IT department did some work/made some changes to the server recently.

This was working fine on both the staging and live sites until last week.

Did you check that index contains data?

If IT department did some works there, there could be probably disk permissions

Dawid,

I ran it, but honestly I am not certain what I am looking for here.

I see under the Available Fields area for the development site _content lists term count as 17,137 and % as 39.59%

For the live site _content shows 0 and 0.00% so this, to my untrained eye, seems off.

Can you point me int he direction of some specific things I need to look for?

Have you tried rebuilding all your indexes on the prod site?

Yes, rebuilt and optimized the search indexes. No luck.

Clyde, in your PROD server, go to this folder \CMS\App_Data\CMSModules\SmartSearch\, do you see folders for your indexes? And inside those folder, do you see files like segments.gen, and other .CFS, .DEL files?

Rui Wang, yes there are files there including segments.gen and .cfs and .del files.

In comparing the Dev to the Production site, the folders differ in number of files and size. The Dev site shows 41 objects and 8.07MB. The production site for the same index shows 25 objects and 1.88MB.

Thanks

Interesting that you have more indexes in DEV than PROD. Can you try delete an index from PROD admin UI and see if the catalog folder also gets deleted in file system? Then try to recreate one and see if new one appear in file system? Then, with in the Admin UI > Smart Search, use the search preview for that index to see if you get any results.

Oh, just realized you are using page crawler, not just page. Can you test with a Page index type, I assume you will get results. For Page Crawler, make sure the user you are using do have the right permission and the domain is configured correctly to the PROD domain.

Rui, the problem with using a page index is that we have a lot of pages for academic programs that use repeaters for shared content. My understanding is that a page index does not index this type of content. Is that correct?

Clyde, that's correct, dynamically generate pages need to utilize page crawler for indexing. I was asking you to test with a page index so we can isolate the issue to be page crawler only and not disk permission.

Ok, thank you. I will try that.

Riu, the pages index did return results. So the issue is something to do with the Pages Crawler index type? Any idea why would it have worked for months then suddenly stopped?

Thanks, Clyde

I don't think it has anything to do with the index type. I think it has to do with crawler settings or cralwer accessing your site.

1. Are your user and domain empty (using defaults) in Crawler settings?
2. How long does it take to rebuild the index? Crawler index usually takes much more time than normal index - of course depends on your site. Your index file size might not be 0 (few hunders kilobyes), but in fact it could be just schema without any data - so it is empty.

I think the problem is the access i.e. crawler accessing your site - either it is trying crawl something that does not exists or it can't access.

A good idea is to check the event log, i.e. if crawler access a page and it is crushing you can see error in the log and you see this User agent: Kentico CMS Smart Search Crawler. Just to prove the point:

1. you can create a page make sure it is crushing and you see the error in the event log :)
2. rebuild the index (i.e. start the crawling)
3. check the event log - find the error. if you see it and the user agent is Kentico CMS Smart Search Crawler - it means the crawl is happening correctly.

It has been rebuilding for almost 2 hours now. There are no entries in the error log containing user agent Smart Search Crawler.

Can you check the Search Tasks under Smart Search App, do you have tasks stuck there? If so, you need to delete them and try rebuild again.

Rui,

Nothing has failed or seems to be hung up. It is moving from batch to batch, just slowly. This is the Pages Crawler index. The Pages index rebuilt very quickly and returned results when tested.

Thanks, Clyde

If you have a pretty large website, try to build a test index with just a section of pages added to the index so you don't have to wait very long for testing.

Rui,

When I use a simple Pages Index, it works fine int he testing area and on the public facing live site.

When I use the Pages Crawler Index, it does not work in either the search preview area or the website on the live site. Even indexing just a section of pages as you suggested. It does, however, work fine on our development server instance.

Thanks, Clyde

Does the index show X number of items been indexed and has some size to the index? Also, what user account and domain are setup for the page crawler index?

On the partial site index it shows: Indexed items: 78 Index file size: 71 kB

For the Full Site it shows: Index info Indexed items: 2104 Index file size: 1.8 MB

Same Full Site Index on the development site shows: Indexed items: 2011 Index file size: 8.1 MB

I had left the user account and domain blank as it said it would use defaults here. This had worked fine until last week. Should I re-index with values placed in those fields?

Yes, please try use an global admin account and your actual PROD domain name. (also, just to check, does the default "administrator" account still exist in PROD? and if you go to the Sites application, is the default domain for the PROD correct or somehow a STG/DEV domain got copied over.)

Yes the default admin account exists as a global administrator. Should i use my global admin account?

This appears to have resolved the issue. Thank you for your help on this.

I'm glad you finally got that point, which I've been saying check the user name and domain since yesterday afternoon for total of 3 times.