Intro

Checking Links

Test Index

Test Search

Search Forms

Result Pages

Search Result Items

Maintenance & Logs

Choose the Service For You

Everyone is familiar with webwide public search engines and their lists of results. A local search results page is very similar, although for the best user experience, the search results page should look and feel like the rest of your site. If you are using a remote search service as a permanent part of your site, be sure that you choose a service that lets you customize the page design enough for your comfort level.

Simple Customization features

• page color: let you select the page color, so it matches the rest of your site design
• background: set the background graphic
• text and link colors: keep the text, link, active link and visited link colors consistent with the rest of your site

Page Design

Some services let you lay out your results page, including the page sections above, to the left, to the right, and below the results list. This allows you to include your normal navigation and site structure links, showing searchers more about the scope of your site. This usually includes fields for you to paste in your HTML code, and you will probably have to try this a couple of times to get the right relation ship with the results list, so this is only accessible to those who have some HTML tag experience.

Advertising

Several of the free site search services will display banner advertising on the search results, although none of the paid versions will do so. For many sites, it's a fair trade for searching services, but for others, such as libraries and public schools, advertising is inappropriate, so they should choose a version without advertising.

Results Page Features