Custom Search Engine For Website looking for alternatives to google

[sonesay 7]

I'm trying to help my friend finish off a website for his client. Hes not very good with web development but its his client and they want a custom search engine. We have looked at what Google offers but it comes with ads unless you pay a yearly subscription. We need something that we can integrate into our own website easily without any ads at all if possible. We have tried jRank.org's script but somehow there is an error and we cant seem to validate a context so it wont work for us. The documentation is very vague also and we did follow the instructions. So basically we need any info from anyone who has experience in this. I was thinking I may try create a custom script but we don't have much time before we hand over the site to the client. Searching Google is also a pain since it comes up with many listing of sites that enter your site into a search engine. We need a search engine integrated into the site to search for things only on the site.Looking forward to hear any responses thanks

[coolcat50 0]

Well, I know a way to integrate a search engine into your site, but it is not truly integrated. It is similar to Google's as to where it takes you off-site. Which I think Google's does. Well if you wish to check it out look at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/.

[sonesay 7]

nope you can integrate Google search into your site but like I said it comes with ads or you can pay a subscription starting from $100 US dollars annually for businesses. I looked at that site you gave but its not exactly what I'm after. I've seen certain blogs and CMS come with search fields that have been pre-made for you. I don't think it works since a member on here was asking how to get it going a while back but I had no answer as I did no use them. Has anyone got it to work that way? if so and you'd like to share the details please do.

[coolcat50 0]

Well, Wordpress has a built-in search function. See my blog in my signature inside the hide tags. I am pretty sure Joomla has a search feature as well. I am not entirely sure though.

[sonesay 7]

Yeah I just checked their search functions out and it seems to be the case that they do database searches to find results. I think I could of done a custom search if he was using databases for his website entries except he isn't and all his content is hard coded in to the HTML lol. The only other idea I can think of is how web crawler bots do it. They crawl through each page periodically and track keywords with page references but I have no idea to create such a bot. Anyone up for a challenge LOL?

[jlhaslip 4]

from an Xisto Topic:

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[electriic ink 1]

It's cheating on a grand scale but this would work:

<form action="http://google.com/search" method="get" name="searchform">Search <input type="text" name="q"> <input type="submit" value="Search!" onclick="document.searchform.q.value+=' site:***insertsitenamehere.com***'"> </form><noscript><br> The search engine requires javascript to work</noscript>

It saves creating tonnes of your own php code...

[dave2win 0]

If you have php enabled on your Web Server then you can easily add a serach engine. Just use sphider. It's one of the best search egines written in PHP. I myself use it on a web site of mine. You can find the sphider Script at http://www.sphider.eu/. You can download the script and change the settings and you can index the pages you need. It works in a very similar fashion to that of Google. And it meets with the recommendations mentioned by you in the first post.

You can see a working prototype of Sphider at http://emmaforever.co.nr/. This is the site which I was talking about. I own this site. Go to Site Section and scroll down the page to see a Search Input Box. Enter "Emma" ( I recommend this term as this site is on Emma Watson and it has a lot of instances of Emma Watson, you may also get a lot of results for some common words. It does in site searching so stick to the words which you see on the first page otherwise you may not get any results as I ahve not totally finished the site and the pages are not so Vocabulry Rich ). You'll get a list of results. You can also use it in an Advanced Mode.

I hope this helps you.

[sonesay 7]

It's cheating on a grand scale but this would work:

<form action="http://google.com/search" method="get" name="searchform">
Search <input type="text" name="q"> <input type="submit" value="Search!" onclick="document.searchform.q.value+=' site:***insertsitenamehere.com***'"> </form>

<noscript><br> The search engine requires javascript to work</noscript>

It saves creating tonnes of your own php code...

Interesting script but it still opens goes off the site to Google which is not what I'm after. Another problem was my friends page is not even indexed in Google LOL so there returns no search results.

If you have php enabled on your Web Server then you can easily add a serach engine. Just use sphider. It's one of the best search egines written in PHP. I myself use it on a web site of mine. You can find the sphider Script at http://www.sphider.eu/. You can download the script and change the settings and you can index the pages you need. It works in a very similar fashion to that of Google. And it meets with the recommendations mentioned by you in the first post.
You can see a working prototype of Sphider at http://emmaforever.co.nr/. This is the site which I was talking about. I own this site. Go to Site Section and scroll down the page to see a Search Input Box. Enter "Emma" ( I recommend this term as this site is on Emma Watson and it has a lot of instances of Emma Watson, you may also get a lot of results for some common words. It does in site searching so stick to the words which you see on the first page otherwise you may not get any results as I ahve not totally finished the site and the pages are not so Vocabulry Rich ). You'll get a list of results. You can also use it in an Advanced Mode.

I hope this helps you.

looks promising thanks for sharing. I'm trying it out now.
Edited April 20, 2008 by sonesay (see edit history)