Working with SharePoint2010 Search with SSL Security

While configuring Search Server for a client, one of the site collections to be crawled and indexed was configured with SSL.

As a result, an initial crawl of the site collection failed with the following error displayed in the crawl log:

“The secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate sent by the server was invalid and this item will not be crawled”

The site collection in question is not accessible outside client’s firewall and there were no additional special requirements that needed to be considered. As such, the following changes were made to the configuration of Search Server:

From the Search Administration site accessed through Central Administration…

1. Click on Proxy and timeouts in the Crawling section
2. Check the Ignore SSL certificate name warnings check box and click OK
3. Click Crawl Rules in the Crawling section
4. Click Create New Rule
5. Add the path for the site collection with a /* (e.g. https://intranet/*)
6. Click the Include all items in this path radio button in the Crawl Configuration Section (leave the three check boxes below unchecked)
7. Click the Specify client certificate radio button
8. Select the appropriate certificate from the Certificate drop-down menu and click OK

Once the above changes were made crawling of the site collection completed without any issues.