buying a search engine for a website

[slyve]

Hi,

My boss would like to buy a search engine for his website. Since I am completely new to this, I was wondering if someone could give me guidelines on what to look for and how I can go about this.

Appreciate any help.

Thanks.

 

[Guru7777]

I can only suggest the one and only best option:

http://www.google.com/appliance/

I have worked for 2 top 5 banking companies, and both of them had Google searches on their Intranet sites.


Hope that helps.

 

[Foamcow]

If it's an "internal" search engine you want, i.e. one that searches your own site and nothing else, then try

http://www.atomz.com

 

[slyve]

Its not an internal search engine I am looking for.

My boss doesnt want google for some reason. He said something like it puts their logo on our site or something? So, are there any other paid seach engines I could look at?

Thanks.

 

[manarth]

what do you mean when you say "a search engine for his website"?

is this a search engine: say [ignore]

http://www.mydomain.test/searchpage.html

[/ignore], that will index what's on your web site?

If so, it will depend on the content of your site. If it's purely a static site (no database lookups, no asp/jsp/etc) then a google box will do the trick nicely - and AFAIK you don't have to put their logo on your site.

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please tell us if our suggestion has helped[/li][li]need some help? faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[BabyJeffy]

Please supply us with some details on the website in question.

Is the site driven out of a database (if so, what one)? Does it use JSP, ASP, PHP, CFM or just plain old HTML? What platform are you using (Sun Solaris, ZX81, Windows 2003 Server, MacOSX, RedHat etc)?

How big is your website (how many pages as perceived by the user)? Do you want to offer searching across PDFs, DOCs, XLS, and other 3rd party documents as well? How many users do you anticipate using the web site (check your logs to get an average number of hits per day or something)?

All these factors determine a suitable search engine.

Finally... what kind of budget is available? It may be cheaper/more practical to get a custom built search solution for your website. Example - adding a "FullText" search across 3 distinct fields for a JSP/Apache/Windows2003Server/mySQL intranet of about 2000 pages took less than an hour to get working... and less than 4 hours total from start to finish. I'm sure your mileage will vary.

Jeff

 

[slyve]

Sorry about the vague description. Thanks for all those questions Jeff, they have given me a sense of what I should be looking for.

Is the site driven out of a database?
No

Does it use JSP, ASP, PHP, CFM, plain HTML?
ASP

What platform are you using?
Win NT

How big is your website (how many pages as perceived by the user)?
Very small, less than a couple hundred pages

Do you want to offer searching across PDFs, DOCs, XLS, and other 3rd party documents as well?
Didn’t plan that until you asked, but, we would definitely like the flexibility of being able to integrate it if needed.

How many users do you anticipate using the web site (check your logs to get an average number of hits per day or something)?
Maybe about 50 at the max

What kind of budget is available?
We are ready to pay a little extra to get a good search engine, maybe upto $500

Primarily, we would like to be able to customize it to the highest degree.

Thanks.