I'm using MOSS 2007 v12.0.0.6529, and the the Shared Services crawler is ignoring content inside Content Editor Web Parts. The page itself is a Publishing page, and content within the Page Content field is indexed properly and shows up in search results. How can I ensure that content within Content Editor webparts is also indexed? Or do I have to use other methods like additional content fields in the page?
After some more tests, I found out that a CEWP inserted into the OOB Team Site welcome page does show up in search results. Does the crawler handle Publishing sites differently?
I'm pretty sure as long as it's a shared web part, and you're using the MOSS search index it will index the displayed contents of a CEWP. If you are doing some kind of fancy Ajax-y or other dynamic/delayed loading of content in the CEWP, then don't expect the content that gets rendered by the Ajax calls to be indexed.
Does literally none of the content from any of your CEWPs show up in the search index?
Apparently the site contained custom permissions so the crawler skipped indexing page content. I fixed the problem by going to Site Settings / Search Visibility and forcing the crawler to index the page.
You will need to have the site crawled like an External site.