How to add search to your site

[soccrt]

How can i add search to my site using a free and simple program, without going through google?

[stapel]

Use a free script, such as the one provided by XAV, or use some other service, such as Freefind.

Eliz.

[old_expat]

If your host has, or will install Swish-e, it is a good free alternative. No descriptions, just page titles listed as search results, but is amazingly fast and doesn't require much disk space

[naitsirhc26]

Do you really need a site search?

[stapel]

Large sites, and professional ones, usually have some sort of search utility. Users, I think, are coming to expect it, and I know that I frequently get annoyed when I can't find one.

Eliz.

[old_expat]

Do you really need a site search?

I agree with Stapel. Plus, having a good and fast site search tool is a good alternate navigation tool.

[LunaC]

I've used Fluid Dynamics search on a few sites. If you're ok with using a cgi script this is the one I'd suggest trying. The install isn't too hard and once it's installed you can fiddle and tweak till your hearts content.

The free version and the paid are exactly the same, so you can use it as long as you want to test it. It is worth paying for if you decide to keep it though, even if only for the warm feeling of knowing you registered ;)

(Sorry if this is too specific and goes against this forums TOS. And no, I am in no way affiliated with them, just a happy user.)

[Angonasec]

Yes the FDSE search is excellent.

I've used it for two years.

I missed the cached page feature of G though, so I recently asked Google for a NFP site search. Which has no ads, and is better than their free one.

Google kindly gave me a free license, but after I installed it, I found it didn't perform as nearly well as the FDSE. In fact it was unusable

The problem was due to G serving up lots of dead supplimental links in the serp which gave a 404 when clicked.

So I simply changed back to FDSE after a day.

Surprising, but true!

Get FDSE, and tinker with the weightings you can apply to the body, title, meta, etc, to refine results.

[stapel]

I liked the Fluid Dynamic Search Engine (FDSE), but my site is too active, and I had to shut it down because it was using too much of the server's "resources". I've been happy with FreeFind's service. The ads are so inobtrusive as to be almost invisible, and the search results of my site are good. (I don't offer off-site searching.)

In case you're wondering, the search box was used about 2300 times a day, on average, in May. Some links to my site even refer specifically to the "search" box, recommending its use.

My site is fairly small, having under five hundred pages. If you've got a bigger site, your users might appreciate a "search" box even more than mine do.

Eliz.

[wmuser]

I guess adding google search is the simplest one

[Mokita]

I've been using iSearch free version for a number of years, and really like it:

[isearchthenet.com...]

The latest version, 2.16, is XHTML compatible and it is easy to create and link to a custom style sheet and integrate it with your site design.

It doesn't have any advertising, just a small line saying: "Powered by iSearch" at the bottom of the results page.