Website Search Feature Options
How To Select a Search Engine Solution for Your Website
Users are need search to find information they need. With the number of different search engine option available today - how do you select the right search engine?
Almost every website today needs a search feature for its users. There are exceptions to this rule, but generally most websites should have one implemented. How do you decide what type of search solution you need? What if you don’t have a lot of money? The good news is there a number of different solutions at varying price ranges for your website. You just need to clearly understand your requirements before you start shopping.
Document Your Requirements
Before you go out and starting search engine shopping, make sure you answer the following questions:
Is your website hosted in-house or with a hosting provider? If you are using a provider they should be providing a solution with your hosting package.
- What is your platform technology? Are you primarily Microsoft, Java, Linux based? Your technical environment will influence your selection.
- What type of information do you need to search? Are you searching only web pages? Or are you also searching documents (PDF, Word, xls), database content, other web sites not hosted by you?
- How many documents will you be indexing (count all types of documents except database content).
- Will you need to index secure directories or documents?
- Do you want to be able to restrict certain directories or documents from being indexed?
- Do you want the ability to set keywords, best bets, “did you mean”
- Do you need to search people directories?
- How often does the content change? Will you need incremental crawling? Or can your site be crawled once a day?
- Do you have a budget in mind?
These are just some of the questions you need to answer before you go out and start looking at solutions. Once you have these, then you have a set of evaluation criteria much like that for selecting a content management or other product.
What follows are a good sampling of different levels of search product solutions. These are generally the most popular or just really unique examples of search engines.
Enterprise Search Solutions
Enterprise solutions are top of the line products. They are the most expensive you can buy and tend to have the most functionality. They also tend to support indexing the highest number of documents. Products include:
- Verity
- Autonomy
- FAST - note that Microsoft has just recently bought FAST, so it's unclear at this time where the product is headed until the deal is finalized.
- Google has an enterprise search solution that is actually a complete server solution (and not just the software).
Mid-Range Search Solutions
There are number of more mid-range, mid-priced solutions you can consider:
- Google Mini search appliance - this is also a full "drop-in" server solution. it gives new meaning to plug and play and contains a lot of rich functionality. The difference between this version and the enterprise version is number of documents.
- Microsoft Search Server 2008 - this is Microsoft's "enterprise search engine". It's actually die to be released RTM this quarter.
- SharePoint Search - if you have MOSS implemented, then you'll want to look at this search engine. It's packaged with collaboration and content management functionality and gives you many of the features of the more high-end enterprise solutions.
- Quintura - this is a new search engine. It's unique in that it utilizes tag clouds to do searching. Definitely a search engine to take a look at.
Low-Cost Search Solutions
Just because they are low-cost, does not mean they aren't pretty good in their own right.
- Microsoft Search Server Express 2008 (MSSX) - this baby is free; it's currently in Release Candidate ( just released in Dec. 2007). It has incredible functionality - it's an express version of MS Search Server 2008. The only difference between the two is that MSSX can only be deployed on a single server - which means it's not "enterprise". It also required Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 be installed on the server it's on - which really isn't a big deal.
- Google Custom Search - for a ordinary user website this is free; used for a business website the cost depends on the number of documents indexed. Cost ranges from $500-1000. This search engine is actually hosted at Google - you just plug it into your website and off you go. It doesn't offer a huge amount of functionality outside basic searching - so if you need something more functional - this is not for you.
Final ThoughtsThere are a lot of search products on the market today that offer viable solutions for your business. Other things to consider before selecting a product include integration considerations with other software like portals and content management products. Sometimes you can get deals for certain search products if you have other products.
Carefully review all your search requirements and pick a short list to review. Or if your funds are low - start with the low-end solutions and decide if any of these can fulfill your needs. Just remember, it really does come down to what you need that search engine to do. So if your requirements aren't clear - you aren't going to make a good decision.
