Tips for configuring search center

1. People searching does not work...
... while searching global scope ("All Sites") returns proper results.


Go to the "CA > Manage service applications > your Search Service Application > Content Sources". Make sure that one of the content sources being crawled (most probably "Local SharePoint sites") has the following entry in start addresses: "sps3://server-name" - where server-name is your web application URL.

You now have to check the Search Crawling Account permissions. Go to the "Security > Specify web application user policy" and select your web application. Make sure that crawling account has Full Read permission.

Search Crawling Account also needs to have permissions to the User Profile Service Application. To check it, open "Manage service applications", highlight User Profile Service Application and click on the Administrators button at the ribbon. The required permission is "Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers".

Run full crawl on the content source containing "sps3://server-name" start address.

Now your people searching should work...

2. Searching within contextual scope does not work...
... while searching global scope ("All Sites") returns proper results.

Go to the Central Administration and check the alternate access mappings for the zone Default. Then go to the "Manage service applications > your Search Service Application > Content Sources". One of the content sources defined there (most probably "Local SharePoint sites") pertains web application where search in contextual scope is not working. Check the start addresses: the host URL must be the same as defined in alternate access mappings for the zone Default.

SharePoint creates the entry in the content source whenever you create a web application. But you must remember that changing  alternate access mappings can cause the URLs listed in content source stop matching and then your contextual searching stops working.

3. You want to have searching results from contextual scope displayed on the same, customizable page, as searching results from global scope.


That's pretty easy. Go to the Site Collection Administration settings and choose "Search settings".
In the "Site Collection Search Dropdown Mode" select mode that allows contextual scope, otherwise the next setting - "Site Collection Search Results Page" - will be disabled.
Now you have to enter address of the page that the searching result will be displayed on - preferably the search results page from your Search Center: