Want to add a Search Engine to MY site - but not the likes of Google...

Seanie M

I have seen various ways of doing this, from the free ones that don't work or display the results on a sponsors page, to the few not-working javascripts that apparently let your own site be the search, and displays the results as such on your own customized results page. And then there are the first hand vendors of the software, for server-side searching technology of your site only, but they can be expensive at times, and the instructions not so clear...

What experiences can you guys shed light on for me for a free, or inexpensive, search feature on my site(s)?

TIA,

Seanie.

Ph3n0m

Well for me, when I have built my own search facility for any site that required it it always worked well - again depending on how sophisticated I wanted it to be (single keyword searching, multiple word/phrase searching, % of relevance, etc)

colm_c

If you're going to have search on a site you better make it good, a bad search engine will do you more damage.

For example if I use the search once, and the results aren't even close to what I'm looking for I'll tend to never use the search again, instead browse around trying to find what I'm looking for.

For a website of less than 100 pages, a search engine is simply more hassle than it's worth.

Some good enterprise search engines are Verity (www.verity.com) they used to give you a free license for up to 25k documents and Google Mini (www.google.com/mini) which is a search appliance (hardware and software in one) costs about 2k euro + hosting a 1u server.

mneylon

http://perlfect.com/freescripts/search/ works very well

Seanie M

Thanks for the replies.

Blacknight, I'll check out that script and see how it goes.

Ph3n0m, have you thought about promoting your script? It could make you famous!

colm_c, I know what you mean!

Seanie.

Ph3n0m

Seanie M wrote:

Ph3n0m, have you thought about promoting your script? It could make you famous!

I'm already infamous Nah the script really does need some work (when I get the time plus there are one or two (insert several) holes that I have to patch.

phil

I would really not bother putting in the effort if your content is publically accessible. Google's search is highly efficient, will reduce the load on your own end and is a well-known brand.

Open source search engines/systems have always been notoriously poor but there have been efforts in the last year or two to bridge some of the gap between open source server-side software and commercial spiders.

- http://incubator.apache.org/solr/ - Solr, apache incubator project based on Lucene. More for tomcat-style applications I would imagine. There are variants of this as well including nxlucene (Python + Zope variant). It's extremely detailed, large and not a drop-in.

- Htdig was one of the more popular server side search engines, but IMHO it's woefully inadequate these days and it hasn't been updated in years. It was superseded by a bunch of equally inadequate pieces of software like OpenFTS.

The best bets that are out there are probably perl / python scripts designed, but IMHO they're just fairly simple text search scripts and rarely do much more than that. They rarely feel like a "normal" search engine and people used to Google / Yahoo will have problems with them.

Phil.

Seanie M

phil wrote:

I would really not bother putting in the effort if your content is publically accessible. Google's search is highly efficient, will reduce the load on your own end and is a well-known brand.

Hi Phil,
my site is accessible -> www.tullamorelife.net is the one. In it are many sections like clubs & societies, sports clubs, directories, and so on. As the site grows, I think the search will be valuable. The forums themselves have their own search, which is fine. I hope to build up the 'directory' on the main site - people can then either trawl through the alphabetical listings, or use the search for a quick find.

Seanie.

Seanie M

blacknight wrote:

http://perlfect.com/freescripts/search/ works very well

Not a favourite of mine I'm afraid. Much of the installation and configuration process REQUIRES a telnet or shellscript handler - very alien software to me (forgot all my line-codes years ago!).

Shame, looked like a handy free one and all...

phil

I don't see why you wouldn't use Google's site search. It really is the lowest maintenance, best search engine you could use. Google also has an Ajax search they released last year as well. http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/

If you're not willing to go through code, configure scripts then I don't see much of an option than Google, or Google-like search engines. In fact, I don't really see what the problem is with them anyway?

Phil.

colm_c

phil wrote:

I don't see why you wouldn't use Google's site search. It really is the lowest maintenance, best search engine you could use. Google also has an Ajax search they released last year as well. http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/

If you're not willing to go through code, configure scripts then I don't see much of an option than Google, or Google-like search engines. In fact, I don't really see what the problem is with them anyway?

Phil.

One issue with using google.com is the frequency of updates, you may get indexed every six weeks or six months!

As I mentioned in my post above, there isn't much point in having a search for a site thats small - read < 50 pages.

If people can't find something in a site of that size then there are much bigger problems in the website - Information Architecture, taxonomy, page titles, the content itself etc.

If it's a big site that needs a search then you should put some thought and some cash into it too - if you're going to have a search, make sure it's good.

After all it's the number 1 in Neilsen's top ten web design mistakes:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

Seanie M

phil wrote:

I don't see why you wouldn't use Google's site search. It really is the lowest maintenance, best search engine you could use. Google also has an Ajax search they released last year as well. http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/

If you're not willing to go through code, configure scripts then I don't see much of an option than Google, or Google-like search engines. In fact, I don't really see what the problem is with them anyway?

Phil.

It's the whole results displayed on Googles own site, away from the original one, that bugs me. It looks tacky too in my opinion.

phil

Seanie, unless you have a whole bunch of time to waste, I wouldn't let it bug you too much. You could spend a whole bunch of time integrating something that would be much less effective than Google search.

There are other ways of integrating Google search into your site, including using their API (Btw, Yahoo has the same thing if you prefer Yahoos new "open" style) which is reasonably seemless and definitely less tacky.

Phil.

Seanie M

Sounds good Phil, tell me more...

phil

Seanie,

Two options here as well:

1) http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/web.html
2) Something like http://www.dankarran.com/googleapi-phpsitesearch/

Phil.