Folks, there are so many good reasons to add a search engine to your site.
Do you have search functionality on your site? What search tool are you using? And just one question for those of you who don't have a site search feature: Why not?
I really think many of you would be interested in learning more about this hot topic!
Yann
Yann wrote a great piece on TechSoup detailing how to add a search to your site. Also included is a list of some great free hosted search services. Visit
this link to read the piece.
Thanks, Alex. And if anybody has any questions or comments about the article, please feel free to post them here.
Yann
Joined on 04-03-2005
TechSoup Member
You can add hotbot
To go to HotBot
Click Here. :)
Joined on 05-31-2005
TechSoup Member
Atomz.com. I have read that you enjoy Macromedia's tools, and as a result, there is good reason to find that you will feel the same way with Atomz--their founders are former Macromedia employees.
The tool is free up to 750 pages (I think). I could explain it all, but they are the salespeople not me (I am horrible at it). You may find them at Atomz.com ,or http://atomz.com/applications/search/trial.htm
Hope this works well for you!
Regards,
Donski
Since there's a wide selection of search tools available, you might be wondering which one is "best" to use for your own site.
The answer really depends on your needs. Just because a search tool is right for one Web site, it doesn't necessarily make it the best choice for another site.
Here are a few points to consider:
- Page Limits: Up to how many pages can the search tool index? For example, the free version of Atomz can index up to 750 Web pages. So you're fine using this tool as long as your site doesn't exceed this page quota. If it does, then it's best to look elsewhere.
- Site Indexing Frequency: How often does the search tool perform an index of your site? Do you need a tool that performs daily, weekly or monthly indexing? You can answer this question by asking yourself how often you make changes to your site (i.e., how regularly do you add, delete or edit content?).
- Template Customization: Find out how much control you have over the look and feel of the search results page. Does the tool allow you to customize this page at all? Can you make the page look like the rest of your site? Also, do you have any control over how the search results are displayed?
Remember that many of the search tools are available as both a free version and a paid version. You can always test drive the free version on your own site to see how each tool performs.
The
Search Engine Examples test page at Alder Consulting will let you see for yourself how some of these tools work.
Yann
Nice test/demo page!!
Two comments:
1) SpiderLine has expired... :-(
2) Where's Zoom...!? :-(
Atomz seems good and large enough for most sites, but I still prefer my Zoom, since it's not dependent on any outside service. Zoom rocks! I just wish they had an affiliate program...
1) SpiderLine has expired... :-(
Christian, thanks for pointing this out. You can also demo other popular site search tools at the
test page of SearchTools.com. SpiderLine is included, and it works.
Yann
Joined on 07-05-2005
TechSoup Member
Just wanted to chime in that I added Google sitesearch in the past month to our site and it's very cool.
Google Public Service Search
It's free for nonprofits and educational institutions. The results page is totally customizable (though I think I messed up some of the javascript in our navigation--I'm not too worried though). Looking at the reports for what our visitors are searching for has been the best part, however. Makes delivering useful content much easier.
Just wanted to mention my experience and provide a link since it wasn't the easiest to uncover on Google's site. You can take a look at our site and try out the search engine here:
The Children's Alliance
And if you have any ideas on how I can fix the javascript in the nav, let me know! :-)
Best,
otts
Hello, I tried to add a google site search to one of my sites, but it wouldn't searh my site.
Is there a port closed or something that is not on the FAQ page at google. here is that form that I tried to put on my site.
Google Search Both Site And Web Form
Also google discusses changing the encoding type; if your site is not encoded with UTF.
Here are the hidden input tags that they discus:
And here are the tags in the page header that indicate encode type:
If you have this its ok.
Here I'd change?
Now, I can ad a google websearch, but not a search that will search my site... I checked their FAQ's but nothing...
Anyone hear anything...
Joined on 07-05-2005
TechSoup Member
Hi dukes,
Do you know if the meta information for your site instructs search engines notto index your pages? Look at the HTML code on your home page, it should be somewhere in the head tag, for something like: meta name=robots content=noindex.
If this tag is there, it means that Google hasn't crawled your site and their site search won't work for you. Remove it, and it will take some time for it to be included in their indexing (monthly?), but it should eventually turn up.
If you haven't already, try the link in my post above yours. That's their nonprofit special link for site searches.
Good luck. :-)
Thanks Otts, I'll give it a try and post the results ok.
O' My meta doesnt have exclusions. I checked.
Thanks
Hey,
If you'll post the URL where you want the google site search, we might can help troubleshoot better.
I noticed in their instructions that it says to replace "YOUR DOMAIN NAME" the three times it appears. Other than that, it looks pretty straightforward.
Missy
I just tried again and no results... It's funny engines have crawled my site I have bots in respective folders...
Well I emailed google support. I changed the page encodeding to match UTf-8, and tried other encoding as well...
Its funny I put major Inktomi Search engines on fortune 500 companies webservers like MassMutual University, but I can't get google's free one to work on this one server...
http://www.inktomi.com//
I'll just build a custom one for the site and turn on indexing for that specific site, it will be less time consuming, LOL...
Thanks
Let's see wha google says...
Joined on 01-10-2009
TechSoup Member
I just added buildasearch's site search to my site. http://www.BuildaSearch.com is a free search service which allows anyone to customize their search engine or site search. I just used BuildaSearch's "copy and paste" feature and added a site search to my site in seconds. www.Pressiod.com