Possible to have SearchCenter as standalone site connected to Intranet Portal?

Question

I'm building a new Intranet Portal with SharePoint 2007 that will have News, Site Directory, and Search. Because I want to invest some serious time into customizing and tuning search, I would like to learn whether it is possible to have the Intranet Search live in its own top-level site collection? That would allow me to isolate and back up/recover the Enterprise Search site independantly of the Portal.

So my question is whether this is doable and if so, how do I connect the Intranet Portal site collection to use my seperate Search site when users execute searches?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this. Create a Search Center Site Collection. Then in all other site collections go to site settings and the using Search settings (under site collection settings header) point to where your search center is.