Supporting a web site is hard work. I should know, I support
sixteen of them, plus two intranets at my day job. If you do
everything properly, you (or your staff) have to design the site,
prototype it, code it, maintain it, promote it and do any of a
hundred other things. There are a bazillion details to take care
of, from the color of the text, the size of the characters and, of
course, the site navigation.
Coming up with a good navigation scheme can be very hard. The
larger the site, the more difficult the task. Having a site with
lots of pages and a good mixture of material makes it even more
difficult. How do you get your visitors to the information they
want without lots of confusing labels, pictures and links?
Virtually every site will have some top-level links on their
primary entry page. Most webmasters have learned to duplicate
those links on most or all other pages on their sites so people
can get from anywhere on the site to anywhere else.
The problem is that this only gives your visitors a few options.
If they don't see what they like, they may look at a page or two,
become frustrated and leave. This has happened to me many, many
times. I'll visit a site and if I don't see what I want I'll go
somewhere else fast.
Unless, of course, I find some way to search for what I need.
You see, adding search capabilities to your site suddenly gives
you an incredibly flexibly, user-definable navigation scheme.
Unless your site is very small, it would be extremely difficult
for you to provide a navigation scheme which gets your visitors to
anything they might need. Site specific search engines provide
this capability.
Here are some utilities which you an install on your web site which
will add searching capability for your visitors. These are useful
for the majority of webmasters which do not run their own servers.
In these instances, a remote utility of some kind is essential as
few (if any) hosts will allow you to modify their servers as
needed.
Atomz
http://www.atomz.com
You want to add a search engine to your site to allow visitors
to search your site? Atomz has an incredible number of features.
You can spider up to 500 pages for free - the only cost to you
being a few advertisements in your results page. Recommended.
Whatuseek
http://intra.whatuseek.com/index.shtml
An excellent service, providing spidering of up to 1,000 pages
for free. Not quite as many options as Atomz, but still quick,
efficient and very configurable. Highly recommended.
Everyone.Net
http://www,everyone.net
A personalized search engine which allows web searches or
searches of just your site. Allows you to change the colors and
logo on the results page.
Freefind
http://www.freefind.com/indexc.html
Very nice search utility. You get to index your site plus a
handy set of other features including site maps, content
monitoring (similar to Netmind), customization and a what's new
report. Excellent service. The free version gives you 25mb of
indexing (the size of your pages), and you can pay for more.
SiteMiner
http://siteminer.mycomputer.com/
Siteminer gives you the capability to add a search engine to
your site specially for your own site. Note: This is not free,
but included as it is a useful service.
About the Author
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets
at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to
read over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your
internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.