Exclude Metadada of PDF Files From Crawling

Question

I need to know if it is possible to exclude PDF files from being crawled.

I've found this link that suggests exclusion rule like so:

http://www.contoso.com/*.pdf

It worked. Search results don't include links to PDF files. But this is is not enough, since Display, New and Edit forms related to PDF files still get indexed:

• http://www.contoso.com/PDFLibrary/forms/dispform.aspx?id=1
• http://www.contoso.com/PDFLibrary/forms/editform.aspx?id=1

The main problem we get now is that crawling takes more than 60 hours to finish and 90% of it is PDF files that noone ever searches for. This is why a solution involving search scopes will not fix the problem in this case. We need to somehow exclude PDF-related forms from being crawled in the first place.

I was thinking about changing all forms for PDF-content type to "PdfFDispForm", "PdfEditForm" and "PdfNewForm". Then I could create an exclusion rule:

http://www.contoso.com/*PDfEditform.aspx*

http://www.contoso.com/*PDfDispform.aspx*

But this is a paintful solution since the site has many site collections and webs.

I would be very grateful if someone can suggest some neat solution.

Answer 1

If you have a SharePoint document library only for PDF documents, you can mark that document library to be excluded from search results.

1. Go to the document library
2. On the SharePoint ribbon, "Library" tab, click "Library Settings"
3. Click on "Advanced Settings".
4. Allow items from this document library to appear in search results? Select No

-Hope it helps