Drupal Site Search Indexing Fails - One Solution

A lot of hair pulling ensues when a Drupal site’s indexing fails. Without an updated index, the search feature will not work properly. Much has been written on this and the problem is fairly common.

Assuming cron is running properly, and a reasonable number of nodes are being indexed per run, we’ve found that most of the time deleting the index from the database and setting the number of nodes to be indexed at 500 or fewer fixes the problem. Of course, if cron is getting hung up on other tasks, troubleshooting module by module might be necessary. There are tools that output what cron is doing that will help determine the problem.