Purge indexed search results for a deleted site

Question

We are trying to create a newer site A, and copy all documents from an older site B to site A. Then delete the entire site B.

We would like to make sure that all previously indexed search results from site B is purged, so they do not interfere with searched results in the newer site A. Is this done automatically when we delete the Site B? How long does it take for SharePoint crawler to catch up? Is there something we could do manually to let SharePoint purge the old index immediately after we delete site B?

Answer 1

It depends on your crawler settings how much time it takes until your search index is updated again.

You can reset your search index manually: Go to the Search Administration page, in the Crawling section, click Index Reset. Verify that the Deactivate search alerts during reset check box is checked, and then click Reset Now.

Answer 2

You could also create a crawl rule which will exclude all results from your old site from the index during the next crawl:

Answer 3

In the short term you could set site B to not be indexed (Site Settings | Search and Offline Availability). Then run a full crawl.

Another alternative is to remove the site from the main Result Source with a path exclusion like -path:http://path to site/*

One other option is to use search results removal in the Search SSA. But it could be very tedious for a lot of content.