Custom Result Types in Microsoft Search

Custom Search Result Types in Microsoft Search enable you to customize your search experience to meet the specific needs of your organization. You can create custom item layouts that alter the way your search results appear on the result set.

How to create a custom Search Result Type?

To create a tenant-level Result Type, go to the Microsoft Search Admin Portal, and select Customizations / Result types.

Click “Add”.

On the first screen, type in the Name of your new Result Type.

On the next screen, select the Content Source. The available options are:

• SharePoint and OneDrive
• [The Content Sources available via a connector]

If you select “SharePoint and OneDrive”, you can select the type of the content on the next screen. The types which we can create custom Result Types for:

• SharePoint list item
• SharePoint page
• SharePoint site
• Portable Document Format (PDF)

Important! As of today, it is not possible to create a custom Result Type for Office formats (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) if they are stored in SharePoint or OneDrive.
However, if the Office files are stored in a source which are connected to Microsoft Search via a Graph Connector, you can define custom Result Types for them.

Once you choose the type of result, you have the option to include additional rules that will determine which specific results will be shown by using this Result Type.

And finally, in the last step, you can design the result layout, using the Layout Designer.

➡️ Learn more about the Layout Designer here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftsearch/customize-results-layout

Limitations

1. Custom Managed Properties can’t be used in Result Type ‘Rules’.
   However, you can use Refinable… ones instead that you map to your custom Crawled Property. In most cases, it’s recommended to use the re-usable properties listed at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/manage-search-schema#default-unused-managed-properties anyway, for easier maintenance and governance.
   
2. Result Types created for “SharePoint and OneDrive” content source doesn’t apply to search results in Bing canvases.

Site level Result Types

To create custom result types on the site level, navigate to Site Settings / Microsoft Search / Search insights and configuration / Result Types.

Important! If the search scope in a SharePoint site has been changed to Hub or Organization scope, you can still define custom Result Types on that site. In this case, the site-level result type will be applied to search results instead of honoring the result types at Hub or Organization scope.