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Adding search functionality to your site

As your site grows in pages, so does the time required for visitors to locate specific information on it. While it's obvious to most the benefits of extending a site with search functionality, the ease in which this could be done may not be. Below we examine your options, some as easy to implement as 123!

Resource list updated Dec 4th, 05'

Hosted Search Services

For the non technical, or those stuck with a technically limiting server (ie: no CGI support), the road to embark on for search capability is a third party service. By merely pasting a few lines of HTML code onto the site, the rest is handled by a magic genie that comes out nightly from the code- crawling the site, indexing it, and making the results accessible to your visitors. Ok ok, maybe something a little less spectacular. Whatever it is that comes out, below lists its sources:

  • FreeFind free to commercial
    This is the only free search service we could find that doesn't put a cap on the # of pages crawled. Business version available for increased functionality.

  • SiteLevel free to commercial
    This is what we use here on JavaScript Kit. SiteLevel is free for sites with less than 1000 pages. We've found the results generated by this service to by very accurate. Recommended.

  • Easy Site Search free to commercial
    Another free site search service.

  • Master.com free to commercial
    Master.com offers a suite of "plugin" services for your site, including site search, for free.

  • Pico Search free
    Enable your website visitors to search your own site. No software download needed. On-line setup.

  • Fusion Bot free to commercial
    FusionBot enables anyone to configure a search engine for their website in minutes, without the need to install any software. Offer customized site search, site map, and reporting solutions for your website.

Let's move on to explore doing the grunt work yourself.