Building a Site Search in the Microsoft World

buy a package, lease a service, roll your own with Index Server?

[RossWal]

Building an ecomm site and need a site search feature.

Might consider a RDBMS table of searchable keywords for each product, but indexing all product descriptions would be better. I've used Index Server before, but in this case I'm not going to have a dedicated server. Do many hosts provide index server? Also, my last use was with MS Site Server. This will be a custom .net site.

So, can anyone give insite to what they use for site search on an MS .net site?

Thanks!

[aspdaddy]

>Do many hosts provide index server?

I havent come across any unless its sold as Sharepoint hosting.

I just use asp search and I rebuild the search database on demand with an admin script that spiders the site and indexes the description and keyword tags.

If you search the pages in realtime with asp its just too slow

[rebelde]

If you have the product descriptions in a database, or can put them there, then set up a fulltext search. That should give you pretty good search results.

[RossWal]

Thanks for both of those tips guys! Really good stuff.

[bmcgee]

Any respectable Windows host will provide Index Server, even on shared hosting.