Set Global Search Center in SharePoint 2016

So, your search center site is ready for SharePoint 2016 (Use this article: Create Enterprise Search Center using PowerShell). As a next step, you should configure the global search center from SharePoint central admin site to set the default search center site for all site collections.

SharePoint 2016 Default Search Center

Once the search center site collection is created, navigate to:

1. Central Administration >> Application Management >> Service Applications.
2. Click on the Search Service Application >> In Search Administration page, Click on “Set a Search Center URL” link.

   

3. Enter the URL of your Enterprise Search Center Site collection that you created and add “/pages” at the end. In my case, its “https://searchcenter.crescent.com/pages”

   

By this, we’ve instructed the SharePoint Search Service Application to use this site to submit search queries and view search results.

Change Global Search Center URL with PowerShell

You can also change the search center URL by using PowerShell

#Get the Search Service Application
$SSA = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication

#Set global search center
$SSA.SearchCenterUrl = "https://Search-Center-URL/pages"

$SSA.Update() 

The “Search-Center-URL” is the URL to your Site Collection created with the Enterprise Search Center template.