Home
Guide
Tools List
News
Background
Search
About Us

Search Tools for Web Sites and Intranets

Current Search Tools News

Google AJAX CSE with CSS

Most of the elements of the Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) results are tagged with class names, designed to integrate with CSS. This means that the colors and elements of the results page can conform to site standards. There's also a viability option for displaying full URLs in search results.

I've also updated the CSE AJAX Basic Example to show methods for opening clicked results pages in the same page (instead of a new one) and to add a helpful note if the CSE can't find any pages matching the search terms. -- July 2, 2009

Decoding the Google Custom Search AJAX API

Google has released a new version of their Custom/Site Search service, and added an "Element" -- a wizard-driven JavaScript that non-technical users can copy and paste to their web sites, even blogs which do not allow uploading. Search Tools has a new Analysis of the CSE and AJAX API and fully-commented sample code with a live version on the same page, because this is much harder for non-programmers to customize than the forms or even the Site Search XML interface (paid version only). I'll be doing more on customizing and functionality and display during this week.

Also coming soon, an updated version of my Google CSE review from 2007. New features include: limited on-demand indexing, Best Bets (promotions), synonyms, new interface for filters (refinements), localized to 40 languages and offering transliteration between character sets.

Solr/Lucene meetup notes

There was a Meetup of Lucene and Solr developers in San Francisco on June 3, and I wrote up some notes. Topics: Solr 1.4, Near-real-time indexing, Payload efficiency, TrieRange, Query parser framework, Zevents, Xoopit, Lucid search, Stopwords are obsolete, and OpenRelevance. The mood in the room was very positive, everyone seemed eager to make Lucene/Solr/etc. better and better. I may have made some converts in my quest to have people think about stopwords, and try indexing everything. -- June 5, 2009

The state of Twitter search

My overview of the state of Twitter Search on infotoday.com. The current version of Twitter Search doesn't even try to do relevance ranking right now (it's sorted by timestamp), so it's not a Google killer yet, despite the hype. -- May 18, 2009

For more news about search engines, see the News page.

I post intermittently at these locations, and hope you'll find them useful:

Blog: searchtools.livejournal.com
Twitter: searchtools_avi
Delicious: searchtoolscom
LinkedIn: Avi Rappoport (avirr)

or contact SearchTools via the contact form



What is a Search Tool
and Why Would I Want One?

Good question! If you have serious content, a site or intranet search engine will allow your visitors to jump directly to the topic they want. More...

Guide to Choosing & Using
Search Tools

The guide will help you learn more about site searching. Or try the remote search services on this site.

Overviews, Reviews, Links, and Surveys

Includes articles and books providing general site search information, and those with more specific product reviews.

Search Tools Product Listings

Alphabetical List or divided by platform: Java, Mac, Perl, Unix, and Windows; also Remote Search Hosting Services, Code Libraries, and Open Source Search Engines

Background Topics and Analysis

Multimedia Search, Faceted Metadata Search, PDF and Web Site Search, Intranets and EIPs, XML and Search, Information Architecture, Web Indexing Robot Spiders, and more.

Vivisimo Velocity Search & Clustering
Clusty
This site provides information, news and advice about web site searching technology. It is maintained by Avi Rappoport, associate AJ Summers and various Search Tools Consulting interns as a service to the Web community. We welcome your comments and suggestions: just contact us. We are also available for search tools needs analysis, competitive analysis, search tools installation and more: for information see the Consulting page , use our contact form or send .
Disclosure: Search Tools Consulting presents the SearchTools.com site as a free service to the web development community and is not sponsored by any advertisers. Search Tools Consulting also provides analysis and information to sites and institutions installing search engines, and to some search engine developers. We do not give them site visitor or survey personal information or allow our relationships with any vendors to change any product review or analysis.
Blog and Comment System

The SearchTools blog on LiveJournal provides an opportunity for you to tell me what you think about enterprise search tools for web sites and intranets, and about the SearchTools.com web site. You do not have to have an account to post, you can reply anonymously. All comments are screened, so there will be no blog spam.

leave a comment

[Valid RSS]RSS feed available

For more news about search engines, see the News page. Technorati Profile
 

Last Update: 2009-07-02

Home
Guide
Tools List
News
Search
About Us
Creative Commons License Creative Commons License  This information copyright © 2009 Avi Rappoport, Search Tools Consulting. Some Rights Reserved, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. On re-publication, attribute copied content to the page's full URL. Permissions beyond the scope of this license are available upon request.