SharePoint 2010 : Managed metadata refinement is missing from Search results

Problem

• Search service application was indexing correctly
• Out of the box Search site was returning content correctly as expected
• Some search refiners were missing. Specifically the ones mapped to Managed metadata and  enterprise keyword columns.

Solution

 

After hunting about for a whole I found the solution which was actually very obvious on reflection but not so obvious when you have a farm sat in front of you.

 

Within the Search Service application, a crawl rule had been created which was set to include some items. There is a setting in there when including items to a specific path as follows:

• Crawl SharePoint content as http pages

This was checked. After unchecking it and re-crawling the metadata refinement options were presented as expected. Obviously having it checked means that no metadata on documents and the like was being indexed.

As advised. Very simple and obvious. Once you know the solution