Once your site starts to get a bit larger, with lots of products/pages and services, you might consider adding a search engine to your site. You should think long and hard before you do. Don’t do it for the sake of doing it. There are many options, including letting the design of your website be your best and most effective search tool (i.e. via links and categories). In short, if you absolutely must include a search function on your site, then by all means do so, but do it the right way.
Now you might be thinking how hard can it be? But it’s a lot harder than you think. Here are some of the pitfalls of adding a search engine to your site and things you should consider:
It just doesn’t work
Imagine the customer that comes to your site to find something they know you have. In this case, imagine a site focused on recipes. With the links on the site your customer should find the recipes they want, for example cakes or cookies. But if a customer has to search for “Christmas Cookies” and they don’t find any information, don’t expect them to be Columbus. A customer does not have patience to search. This is connected to the second pitfall…
That’s not what I call it
Any time you are in an industry you have a lingo that unfortunately your customers might not share. If the pages loaded in your database or the meta-tags used call it the way you think it should be, it might never be found. For example, let’s use the recipe site idea again. In the Jewish tradition there are something called Latkes, however, some people might search for “potato pancake”. You need to make sure your search results work for both terms. Once again, remember a customer does not want to repeatedly refine their search terms to get a result. Unless it’s a good friend or extremely loyal user, you need to keep asking yourself “how persistent will a customer be before they go to a competitor?”
Using the wrong software
By now there a certain conventions, like using quote will bring exact results. If you choose software that doesn’t use these conventions it can cause confusion. We know of one software where to get exact results you need to put exclamation mark after keyword. No one will learn how to search just for your site. As well, so search engines are so open they will bring back too many results, where even part of word will bring up a result. So for example, if you search “port”, results would include all pages with words “port”, “important”, “portrait”, “sport” and “report”. This can get annoying very quick.
Advanced Search Options
Your customers are not there to learn how to use “Advanced Search Options”. They want results. Asking a customer to figure these out when a simple search is suicide. Customers won’t waste their time.
Free third party search
Eventually, to avoid all the issues, some think the simple solution is a free service. While there are some great third party services, you need to be aware of a couple of things. Third party means you do not have control. If their site is down so is your search. You are limited to the features that the search company provides and cannot tweak their script. Also, for the most part they will only catalog pages that are live on the Internet (Intranet and Extranet pages are excluded). Another drawback of the third party search engines is that they catalog a site periodically. You don’t have any guarantee when your newest pages will be added to the search database. So you might use Google custom search, but you are Google’s mercy for the pages from your site in their index. Other things to note, depending on the provider, there may be limits on number of searches a day/week/month, you might not have control over the search results template, you might not be able to add your logo, and there might be ads for which you have no revenue. Personally, seeing a third party search can be seen as a sign of an unprofessional site.
I don’t know how it works but it does
You need to have some understanding of search engines, it will help you choose the right solution for you. In short, you can read this article of how search engines work, or you just read our quick synopsis. A search engine will create an index with using what is called a spider and it will create a database based on keywords/meta tags on each page, and connect them to a particular urls. When a user performs a search for any keyword, the search engine checks the index/database and returns the results.
Now that we have had a chance to explain the pitfalls, what should you do? We recommend using a script which you host on your site. Our personal favourite “free software” is offered by Sphider. Sphider is an open-source web spider and search engine which includes an automated crawler, that can follow links found on a site, and an indexer which builds an index of all the search terms found in the pages. It is written in PHP and uses MySQL as its back end database. It is highly customizable, and had performed admirably in several implementations we have used it for in the past.
Regardless of what you choose, the most important thing is to test, test and test. Try different serach engines and key search terms until you find one which gives the best results, for your needs. You should also track the keywords that people use (from your logs) and make sure users get to the right pages with your in-site search engine.
Remember, though, don’t feel you must have a search engine on your site. It might not even make sense depending on the target audience. A site could be made to work with links that brings results which are equal or better than any search engine out there. In the end, if your search engine is not working properly, pull the plug. Having no search engine is better than an ineffective search engine which frustrates your customers, and sends them looking elsewhere.
Adding A Search Engine to Your Web Site is a post from: Mark8t: Marketing And More