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Crawled Properties

Crawled properties are the raw metadata fields automatically extracted by the SharePoint search crawler during indexing, capturing column values, document properties, and body text from every list item, file, and page.

Common Use Cases

  • Source for custom managed properties: identify the crawled property for a site column (e.g., ows_DocumentType) and map it to a custom managed property so it becomes searchable and refinable
  • Search schema troubleshooting: when a column isn’t appearing in refiners, checking the crawled property confirms whether data is being indexed
  • New column discovery: after adding a site column and populating items, the crawled property appears in the schema after the next crawl, confirming it’s ready to be mapped
  • Custom search solution development: search architects examine crawled properties to understand available data before designing managed property mappings and KQL queries

Benefits

  • Fully automatic: every column, document property, and system field is discovered and surfaced as a crawled property without manual configuration
  • Comprehensive coverage: crawled properties capture data from SharePoint columns, Office file properties, PDF metadata, and content body text
  • Foundation for the search schema: without crawled properties, there are no managed properties, and without managed properties, there is no structured search experience
  • Useful for diagnostics: when the search isn’t working, the crawled property list is the first place to verify whether the underlying data is being captured at all
  • Reflects actual stored data: crawled properties show raw indexed values, helping verify data is stored and indexed correctly before building search-dependent features
  • Supports all column types: SharePoint, people, date, choice, managed metadata, and calculated columns all generate corresponding crawled properties automatically

Key Considerations

  • Read-only by design: crawled properties cannot be created, edited, or deleted; they are generated entirely by the crawler
  • Naming conventions are complex: SharePoint crawled property names use internal column names and type prefixes (ows_q_TEXT_, ows_taxId_). Understanding the pattern is essential for accurate mapping
  • Duplicate properties are common: the same logical column may produce multiple crawled properties with slightly different names, depending on column type or content type
  • Not available immediately: a new column won’t produce a crawled property until the crawler processes at least one item with data in that column. Empty columns are not indexed
  • Cannot be queried directly: KQL queries and refiners work with managed properties only. Crawled properties are strictly an administrative and configuration tool
  • Indexing delays apply: crawled properties may take hours to appear after new content or columns are added, depending on the crawl schedule