Maxiumum number of search scopes

Question

Is there a maxiumum number of search scopes that can be configured in SharePoint 2007?

We could potentially have 720 search scopes. Will SharePoint be able to scale to this level? The reason we have so many scopes, is because we have a FAQ search webpart on many subsites which leverage search and needs to limit results to a single list. This is why we have so many search scopes. (We are using the faceted search 3.0 webpart).

This article says there is a soft limit of 25 and a hard limit of 250. Is that accurate? http://old.markharrison.co.uk/blog/2004/09/sharepoint-scaling-limits.htm

Does search performance go down when more scopes are created?

Answer 1

The figure I have seen for SharePoint 2010 is 200 site scopes and 200 shared scopes per search service application. As far as I know the recommended limit on the number of scopes was unchanged from SharePoint 2007 (i.e. 200 scopes for MOSS). These are recommendations - if you exceed them you will probably get poor performance. The best way to find if there is a hard limit is to try it ;-)

Answer 2

Could you just use the this list scope to control the results instead of making new scopes. You can just pass the parameter in the querystring.