Information About Installing Search Engines on Your Site or Intranet

Information retrieval tools combined with new Web server software offer users a quick way to navigate the World Wide Web. Companies with large Web sites are incorporating search engines into their servers, to give users a quick way to navigate their pages. The tools are an emerging category of applications that combine what are often sophisticated and proven text retrieval technologies with Web server software. Intranet users are also installing search engines inside firewalls to help organize large amounts of unstructured text.

ActionSearch, a member of the Action-Links marketing team is using commercial search and retrieval technology as well as proprietary search engines to offer public search services to companies marketing to Web users.

From a handful of specialized pages for scientists a few years ago, the Web has grown to more than millions of pages. Meanwhile, more corporations and government organizations are finding that the tools that make the Web attractive to external audiences also have a lot to offer internal users. Intranets are replacing or co-existing with conventional local and wide area networks at a growing number of organizations. Current trends indicate that Intranet spending for equipment and software has increased to a point where it has exceeded Internet spending!

As with external Web sites Intranets are simple and inexpensive to create. The popular browsers are free, and pose little expense for a company. Server software can run from free, to several thousand dollars depending on the size and scope of the Intranet. The problem with the Web and company Intranets is that it consists almost entirely of un-catalogued information.

Web search engines, including Internet search engines allow computers to organize and search un-catalogued documents.

Web search engines evolved from indexing software originally developed for host-based systems about two decades ago. These "search engines", though much improved over the years, remain at the heart of all retrieval software, whether the Sherlock on your Mac, or the find feature on your Windows system.

Most work by analyzing a document or a group of documents and creating an index against which subsequent queries are matched. Various search options, supported by algorithms built into the search engines, distinguish one engines from another.

If you would like to install a search engine on your site, whether it is a few pages to a full blown corporate Intranet, there are a few resources to fit your needs. ActionSearch can also contract with you to do it for you!

• Freefind is a web based search engine that is easy for any web site to use and requires no skill.

• SiteSearch is a freeware CGI script.

• Htgrep is a Perl utility to facilitate the construction of simple search engines for the WWW as CGI scripts.

• Ht://dig Is a CGI script for adding search capabilities to a web site or group of sites.

• ICE is an easy to install CGI script for indexing World Wide Web pages.

• Intermediate Search is an internal search engine for your website, very similar to Matt Wright's Simple Search.

• Selena Sol's Keyword Search PERL CGI for under 100 pages or so. Easy to tweak!

• Matt's Simple Search Perl Script shows how htmlscript can be used to build an interactive and searchable index. Server must be htmlscript enabled.

• site Search is a search Engine written in perl.

• WebSearch PERL CGI allows users to search for key words in documents located on your Web site.

• Xavatoria Index Search for large text sites, up to 10 megs.

• Excite offers an intranet site engine.

• Infoseek is one of the better site search engines for unix based systems.

• PLS's powerful search engine and products, accompanied by complete documentation, are available for download from this Web site free of charge. 

• WebGlimpse adds search capabilities to your WWW site automatically and easily.

• Isearch Handles very large collections: over 1 gigabyte collections can be handled on modest servers. Essentially unlimited textbases can be searched with careful layout and planning.