How to Add a Search Engine to Your Site
When visitors arrive at your web site you want them to find the
information quickly otherwise they will lose patience and move
on. A great way achieve this is to add a search engine or search
box to your web site. Since most visitors are already familiar
with using search engines such as Google, they can easily use
the search feature on your site.
In this article I will discuss:
A. The benefits of adding a search engine B. Types of search
service providers C. Where to place a search box on your site D.
How does the search engine work
A. Benefits of adding a search engine and types of sites
where it can be used.
1. Ecommerce sites - your ecommerce site usually has many
different types of products so the navigation menu is not
focused enough to rapidly find the specific product your visitor
is looking for. Adding a search engine to your ecommerce site
will help the visitor to easily and quickly zoom in on the
product by entering their keyword in the search box.
2. Dynamic sites - search engines have difficulty spidering
dynamically generated web pages. These are pages often generated
from a database, so the information on your pages will not
appear in the search engine's index. Add a search engine to each
page of your site. If a visitor arrives on that page from one of
the large search engines, they can then do a quick search from
that page instead of searching elsewhere.
3. Small sites - web sites that contain 5-10 pages don't need a
search engine because visitors don't have to search through many
pages to find the information. Instead, make sure you create a
simple navigation menu at the top or side and bottom of your web
pages.
B. Types of search service providers
1. Atomz (www.atomz.com) - Atomz Express Search is a free
service where you can integrate basic search capability on your
personal web site or on one of your commercial sites. It can be
used on sites with 750 total pages or less and allows
customization of look and feel to match your site's design. Some
third-party text ads are shown above and below the search
results. You can use it for as long as you like for there is no
trial period.
2. Freefind (www.freefind.com) - features include the ability to
customize search and results pages. The free accounts are
limited to 3,000 pages or 32MB of storage. Site search is hosted
on FreeFind's server. It generates a site map for you, tracks
visitors searches and indexes password protected pages.
3. Google Free site search service
(www.google.com/services/free.html) - searches only the specific
domain(s) that you list when you create your search box. You can
customize your results display to include background, text and
link colors you select. The search box itself will reside on
your web site. The search results page will be served by Google
with the customized look and feel you specify. Google may serve
ads on the results page. You can do an unlimited amount of
searches. You must display the Google logo on the web pages that
contain the search box.
C. Where to place the search engine on your site?
1. Place the search box in a prominent location on your web
page...preferably top center or top right.
2. Place the search box on all pages of your web site. Visitors
may enter your site from any page.
3. Make the search box large enough to accommodate all search
terms the visitor would use to find the information.
4. The search box should be a type-in box, not a link so
visitors don't have to wait for another page to load.
5. Limit the search results to 50 per page. Visitors lose their
patience if they have to scroll through long lists of results.
D. How does the search engine work?
It works similar to the major search engines that search the
web, however instead of crawling the web the search engine
spider will search your site. The results of the crawl are
stored in a database that resides on the search company's server.
The company provides the necessary code to add a simple form to
your web page. This usually consists of a search box for
inserting your keywords and a send button. When you click the
button it sends the query to the search company. They process
the query to create a search results page. This shows those
pages in your site that match the visitor's query.
The quality of the search results the search engine spider
collects depends on how much information is contained in your
site. Therefore take time to correctly optimize your site i.e.
provide lots of good content that includes your keywords.
Optimize your meta tags, images and create an accessible
navigation structure.
Optimizing your site will not only provide focused results from
your internal search engine but also boost your rankings in the
major search engines.
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* Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner
and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com. Affordable Web Site
Design and Web Hosting. Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips"
newsletter for more original articles.
mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. Read more of his in-depth
articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
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