How can I add a free search feature to my website?

[frankfriend]

Hi,
Has anyone had experience of adding a free [open source or other] search feature / search engine to their own website, just to search your own site?

I could add Google Search, but it cost $100 per year [lowest rate].

Any practical experience or advice would be very helpful.
:drama::drama::drama:

 

[tittat]

Have you tried http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ ??? Standard edition is Free, but ads are required on results pages.

 

[frankfriend]

Thanks Tittat,
I haven't tried google Ad search. I have one site which does not wany to have ads, which is the snag.

 

[dhruv227]

use google custom search, its great if u want it for free.

 

[OdieusG]

use google custom search, its great if u want it for free.

Or just design one yourself.....that could take some time though

 

[aquagirl]

You can use Google engine search, even you have to index every single page by hand. there are some sites (yes you have to pay) that index for you automatically.
Sometimes, google's site 'spiders' might 'crawl' into your page to check out your content (some times the meta keyword tag) to see if you have any good contents and index by itself.

 

[aigetoamh]

Try google search engg. script.

 

[achumamman]

well, if you can sign up for Adsense then you have an option for putting a CSE in your site which in turn give revenue to you, as the ads are displayed. visit the google adsense page. http://is.gd/HIMt

 

[daman371]

All of the above options look good to me. Personally I've just used PHP and MySQL to search through the database and display the results.

 

[xav0989]

Well this is good when all of your data is contained in a database, but when you have some semi-static, such as templates containing the content being dynamically loaded at runtime, you are better off using a spider to index all your site.

 

[daman371]

Well this is good when all of your data is contained in a database, but when you have some semi-static, such as templates containing the content being dynamically loaded at runtime, you are better off using a spider to index all your site.

True. I haven't made any real sites that aren't dynamic.

 

[indeedmaster]

Google Webmaster Tools

If you plan to let Google index your site for you, you should look into Google Webmaster tools: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

It will let you manage how Google indexes your site, may be useful...