Folder Search Scopes

There's something that drives me nuts every time I need to use it, but because I don't do it often I always forget what it is I do to fix it. This is setting up Search Scopes.

There's plenty of information out there regarding how to set up a search scope for a folder so I'm not going to go into those details, but one thing that comes up is the dreaded "xyz Items, Total: 0" error. That is, when you set up a search scope, an approximate number of items within the scope is returned, but after a refresh, there is still 0 items in total - what gives?

Well, the basic answer is that when you set up a folder search scope, you need to use the url of the default server mapping. In the case I've just worked with, the default server mapping is http://appname.company.com, but because it's available externally the urls I work with are https://appname.company.com. When creating the rule for the search scope, I had to enter http://appname.company.com/sites/collection/Lists/listname for the scope to pick up the valid items.