Recently, I discovered a strange thing with SharePoint 2010: anonymous access never had any search results while authenticated user had.
Here is the situation – you must have Search Application Service and a search center already available:
- Create web application with the following settings (other don’t matters):
- Authentication: classic mode
- Port: 80
- Host header: set with internal URL (such as intranet.sharepoint.contoso.local)
- Authentication provider: NTLM
- Anonymous access: No
- Create a root site collection and add some content (doesn’t matter the template used)
- Extend the new web application with the following settings:
- Port: 80
- Host header: set with public URL (such as intranet.contoso.com)
- Authentication provider: NTLM
- Anonymous access: Yes
- Zone: Internet
- Allow anonymous access to all the web site (from the Site Settings)
- Launch a full crawl from the Search Administration
- Then connect to the web site using internal URL and do a search which should provide results >> You have results
- Do the same using the public URL >> You have no results; sign in and re do the search, you have now results
Interesting no?
The solution is to allow anonymous access when creating the web application.
I have not yet identified where the issue is coming from.