After spending some time and looking at several different solutions I have decided to change the search engine that is used on my website. For many years I have been using FreeFind which had limitations of number of keywords, but generated nice reports at the end of the week and month. A couple of the other things that I didn't like were the fact that PDFs couldn't be indexed unless you subscribed to it which Google does automatically. Being a small operation means to provide the best quality of a site on a budget and this is one of the things that made the Google search much better.
I also took a look at writing my own search engine. This would have given me as much flexibility as I would like in appearance and how the results would be returned, but couldn't find the time to tackle such a project currently. This might be a choice once again later on down the road.
So in the end i decided to give the Google free search engine a try. I have seen it on many other websites and it seems to work very well. I'm hoping that it will help to increase usability of the site, but only time will truly tell though. If you have any comments on the use of the Google Search engine on my site feel free to send me an e-mail.
Sincerely,
Lee Ambrosius
To add a google search on your blog edit your sidebar template. I tried to add the code in here but it refuses me to use HTML. Email me for the code, or better yet get it from the resource links below.
Everything TypePad!:
Adding Google Search to your TypePad weblog
http://www.typepad.com/resources/2003/08/adding_google_s.html
http://www.typepad.com/resources/
Cheers,
-Shaan
http://autodesk.blogs.com/
Posted by: Shaan Hurley | Tuesday, March 09, 2004 at 11:50 PM