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Reading Exam Ref 70-332: Advanced Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013, I made the following finding:

Enabling continuous crawling means that search results can appear before a crawl is completed because adding a document starts a new crawl that might finish before the first crawl. A user can add a document and have it appear in the search results within seconds of it being added, which can greatly improve the end-user experience and help users find the most current information as soon as possible.

However, it doesn’t say what happens when multiple documents are uploaded at the same time in a “bulk upload”, which has a default maximum of 100 documents. I don’t want 100 simultaneous crawls running in parallel when multiple documents are uploaded. Nevertheless, I’m not sure this doesn’t happen.

Does Continuous crawl start a new crawl on each uploaded document while uploading multiple documents at the same time?

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No, it does not. The continuous crawl has a delay of 15-20 minutes before it starts and will add items that has been added since the full crawl was started.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15571.sharepoint-2013-continuous-crawl-and-the-difference-between-incremental-and-continuous-crawl.aspx

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  • Nice answer @Skaft. This is true if no document is added in SharePoint, but the books says "A user can add a document and have it appear in the search results within seconds of it being added". It's this event I'm asking about, not continuous crawl on general.
    – Benny Skogberg
    Jan 13, 2014 at 10:25
  • @BennySkogberg, isn't this event just a matter of luck? If a continous crawl finds the document rapidly? Jan 13, 2014 at 10:30
  • @RobertLindgren Not according to the book which says "because adding a document starts a new crawl". This implies that the 15-minute cycle crawl (incremental) runs in parallel with this "added new document event and crawling instantly". But I don't know if the author is correct though. I may tweet him for further explaination.
    – Benny Skogberg
    Jan 13, 2014 at 10:34
  • The delay of continuous crawl is configurable so maybe if you set the delay to 0 minutes the Beta-crawl will fire instantly. With the risk of having multiple continuous crawls going at the same time.
    – Skaft
    Jan 13, 2014 at 10:35
  • Hmm, can't find anything on Technet supporting the authors view. But as you say, that does not mean that he is wrong though :P @BennySkogberg Jan 13, 2014 at 10:38
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Editing my answer because apparently i missunderstood:

The new default search is the 2010 FAST search, when you upload a file or files in bulk then the event receiver should send those files into a queue which will then be handled by the Continuous crawler. So in effect my previous answer has been wrong/errornous (sorry just human here :D)

You can and probably will have multiple Crawlers running at the same time if the content is sufficiently large, but the search has been changed radically from my understanding. You will also notice that if you enable continuous crawling for new content then the incremental search crawler will become deactivated.

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    Any source for this statement? Always curious to learn more about the search :) Jan 13, 2014 at 9:42
  • Regarding FAST search becoming the default: cardinalsolutions.com/cardinal/blog/portals/2012/11/… "Search refiners have been vastly improved since 2007 and while 2010 was a step in the right direction, you still needed FAST search to get full functionality. Since FAST search has now become 2013 enterprise search we now have a deeper level of refinement out of the box. " Regarding the dedicated crawls running I have a certified Sharepoint Developer with 10 years of experience sitting next to me who confirmed it. But illtry finding a readable source for you!
    – Orbital
    Jan 13, 2014 at 9:54
  • Readable source seems great. I also have a couple of colleagues around me with ~10 years of experience. That does not automatically makes them experts on the internal workings of the search ;) Jan 13, 2014 at 10:03
  • social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/… It seems that the continous crawl doesn't start instantly after you add an item but has a delay until the "beta"-crawl is started. Furthermore the continous-crawl is configurable to add X number of items. "The impact of a "Continuous Crawl" is the same as an incremental crawl."
    – Skaft
    Jan 13, 2014 at 10:09
  • Haha very true Robert i know exactly what you mean wink wink :D
    – Orbital
    Jan 13, 2014 at 10:12

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