Search Box Settings and Inheritance

The Search & Preview Search Box Web Control does not have any settings of its own, so when you place it on a page you simply position it (or allow the Microsoft SearchBox delegate control to place it). The Search Box does have configuration settings, however, which can be made at the farm, application, site-collection or site level. There are two types of settings that affect the Search Box:

• Search Box Scopes: establish the selection of scopes within which a user can choose to search using the search box.

• Search Box Settings: establish other miscellaneous options for search boxes, such as target search-center URL, input-field width, “advanced search” link availability and target, scope-selector availability, etc.

Both types of settings are made using links and controls on the Search Box Scopes page at each site level. As with many other types of settings in Search & Preview, your Search Box settings are settings inherited along the lines of the SharePoint hierarchy and can be overruled at any level.

Figure: SharePoint 2013 structure

The same options are available at all levels. A very simple Search & Preview solution might include just one Search Box configuration, which is managed at the farm level; this will then function as a central Search & Preview search configuration for all result pages on all sites. As the solution grows in complexity, you might decide to override some or all of the inherited Search Box settings by making settings at the site-collection or even single-site level.
When making Search Box settings, you must, therefore, pay careful attention to where you are in the site structure when you open the settings page.