In a large corporate environment with hundreds or even thousands of SharePoint sites, returning good search results is critical. For those of you that are site collection administrators, there is something very useful you can add to your search scope drop down list on your collection home page.  That is by becoming familiar with the Search Scopes option under Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Collection Administration and how to set the "contentclass" property.

 

You can set this propety by choosing New Scope and checking Search Dropdown under the Display Groups options. Once you click OK you will be taken to a page displaying the various search scopes and the one you just created will have a link for "Add rules."  By clicking that you will be taken to the Add Scope Rules page.  Choose Property Query for Scope Rule Type. In the Property Query Restrictions drop down one of the choices is contentclass.  The following is a list of all the various values for contentclass that can be used:

 

        case "STS_Web":                             // Site
        case "STS_List_850":                        // Page Library
        case "STS_ListItem_850":                    // Page
        case "STS_List_DocumentLibrary":            // Document Library
        case "STS_ListItem_DocumentLibrary":        // Document Library Items
        case "STS_List":                            // Custom List
        case "STS_ListItem":                        // Custom List Item
        case "STS_List_Links":                      // Links List
        case "STS_ListItem_Links":                  // Links List Item
        case "STS_List_Tasks":                      // Tasks List
        case "STS_ListItem_Tasks":                  // Tasks List Item
        case "STS_List_Events":                     // Events List
        case "STS_ListItem_Events":                 // Events List Item
        case "STS_List_Announcements":              // Announcements List
        case "STS_ListItem_Announcements":          // Announcements List Item
        case "STS_List_Contacts":                   // Contacts List
        case "STS_ListItem_Contacts":               // Contacts List Item
        case "STS_List_DiscussionBoard":            // Discussion List
        case "STS_ListItem_DiscussionBoard":        // Discussion List Item
        case "STS_List_IssueTracking":              // Issue Tracking List
        case "STS_ListItem_IssueTracking":          // Issue Tracking List Item
        case "STS_List_GanttTasks":                 // Project Tasks List
        case "STS_ListItem_GanttTasks":             // Project Tasks List Item
        case "STS_List_Survey":                     // Survey List
        case "STS_ListItem_Survey":                 // Survey List Item
        case "STS_List_PictureLibrary":             // Picture Library
        case "STS_ListItem_PictureLibrary":         // Picture Library Item
        case "STS_List_WebPageLibrary":             // Web Page Library
        case "STS_ListItem_WebPageLibrary":         // Web Page Library Item
        case "STS_List_XMLForm":                    // Form Library
        case "STS_ListItem_XMLForm":                // Form Library Item
        case "urn:content-class:SPSSearchQuery":    // Search Query
        case "urn:content-class:SPSListing:News":   // News Listing
        case "urn:content-class:SPSPeople":         // People
        case "urn:content-classes:SPSCategory":     // Category
        case "urn:content-classes:SPSListing":      // Listing
        case "urn:content-classes:SPSPersonListing":// Person Listing
        case "urn:content-classes:SPSTextListing":  // Text Listing
        case "urn:content-classes:SPSSiteListing":  // Site Listing
        case "urn:content-classes:SPSSiteRegistry": // Site Registry Listing

By setting this property restriction your search results will only return links to items with this property class that meet your search criteria.  For example, I set content class to sts_web for a search that would only return links to sites with titles or descriptions in them or their site path matching my search criteria.