Link to specific content in PDF through a web search

[KAS68]

Hi all, new member here. I'm fairly new to web development but I think that what I'm trying to do should be doable! I'm really hoping someone can help!!!

[ul]
[li]I'm using Adobe Acrobat Pro X.[/li]
[li]I know how to add named destinations, bookmarks, and links to my PDF files.[/li]
[li]I have added a search feature to the company website.[/li]
[li]I'm testing 2 different searches; 1 is google and one is master.com[/li]
[li]The search does find content within the PDF files BUT.... when you click the link it takes you to the 1st page of said PDF where you have to search again to find the content.[/li]
[li]I'm sure there must be some way to eliminate the 2nd search step and have the original result open to the section where the result resides.[/li]
[/ul]

Am I crazy? Has anyone figured this out? I appreciate any help you can give. Thanks.
K

 

[ChrisHirst]

Forum223 would be the place to ask.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum

 

[KAS68]

Thanks Chris,
I didn't even realize that forum existed .... there are so many I'm still browsing!! I posted my question there.

 

[spamjim]

This is still more of a web question than an Acrobat question, which is why I'm answering here.

These indexing services you are trying will not offer the function you seek. You will need to make your own index.

You can directly link to a page within a PDF by composing a URL like this:

http://www.mywebsite.com/myfile.pdf#page=4

or

http://www.mywebsite.com/myfile.pdf#destinationname

With this in mind, you could create an index HTML page like this.

<ul>
<li><a href="/pdf/document.pdf#page=2">Table of Contents</a><br />Here is some additional descriptive text about this page</li>
<li><a href="/pdf/document.pdf#page=4">Product X</a><br />Here is some additional descriptive text about this page</li>
<li><a href="/pdf/document.pdf#page=6">Ordering Information</a><br />Here is some additional descriptive text about this page</li>
</ul>

Use robots.txt to prevent Google from actually looking in your /pdf/ directory. Google will crawl this HTML page with your own index. You can make as many HTML index pages as you want to give Google better targets.

There are also tricks to use document.pdf#search=[token] but these may only work in the Acrobat/Adobe Reader plugin. Not everyone uses Adobe's PDF viewer in their browser. The Firefox default PDF viewer, for example, does not appear to honor the "search" parameter in the URL.

 

[spamjim]

...and I should note... PDF sucks. When possible, render your content in HTML. It is much more easily found than PDF content. Your discovery of this search issue is just the tip of the iceberg of trouble with PDF.

 

[KAS68]

Thanks for the response spamjim but I'm not sure if what you're proposing is feasible. I'll try to explain a bit more.

We currently have PDF papers (technical papers - maybe 50 or so) on our web site. My boss wants someone to be able to search for a certain topic, i.e. phrase, and find the appropriate sections on said pages to focus on.

I hope that's a bit more clear.

Thanks for your help!
Kimberly

 

[KAS68]

Funny you should say that spamjim .... I was going to tell you in my previous response that I had considered converting all the PDFs to HTMl but a lot of them have figures and it was getting very messy!!!

Thanks for your help!
Kimberly

 

[spamjim]

Your problem was understood. Your boss is expecting a technical impossibility with current search engine indexing of PDF...unless you build your own index and link to each page within the PDF.