SharePoint 2013 Search Magics -> Continuous Crawling

What is Crawling?

There are 3 methods can be used within SharePoint 2013. They are Incremental crawl (default schedule is 4 hours), Full crawl (default schedule is 4 hours) and most importantly Continuous Crawl. Crawling is the process of analysing content from "content source/s" and make available for Search results.

What is Continuous Crawling?

Continuous crawls crawl SharePoint site frequently to keep search results fresh. Continuous crawl will happen in 15 minutes interval. Ultimately users can configure this time interval from 1 minute to 15 minutes

Continuous crawling interval re-configure (put any minutes from 1 - 15 in parameter "n")

$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
$ssa.SetProperty("ContinuousCrawlInterval",n)


Disable continuous crawl

$SSA =  Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
$SPContentSources = $SSA | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource | WHERE {$_.Type -eq "SharePoint"}
foreach ($cs in $SPContentSources)
{
  $cs.EnableContinuousCrawls = $false
  $cs.Update()
}