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How about Googlesearch for TR?

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by stress junkie

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I know that it is somehow possible to have the Google software implemented on a site and configured to search the site topics ahead of world wide searches. The perfect example of this is at sourceforge.net. That web site is a repository for open source projects. If you enter a search on their site search function it will create a two part display. The upper part is, I believe, from Google Ads. The lower part is a site listing of hits for your search. It's really great. I think that TR would help people looking for anwers to questions that are perrenial favorites by implementing this feature. It's even possible that Google pays sourceforge.net for hits on Google Ads. I don't know.

Anyway, this Google search feature found on sourceforge.net is exactly the kind of thing that people could use when they are wondering why their NT domain isn't working with their new Windows Server 2003 PDC, since that question is asked, in one form or another, about once a week.

6 replies

by rexworld

We are always evaluating alternatives to our current search model. There's nothing definitive in the works right now but we are looking at improvements to our search system.

The limitation with Google is that they couldn't crawl our site frequently enough to pick up all the latest discussion posts.

by craig herberg

Currently, it looks to be about two days behind. So, going to Google and typing (without the quotes)

"site:techrepublic.com.com 3/16/05"

returns posts from March 16, but a query for 3/17/05 comes up empty. Even so, that's not too shabby!

Craig Herberg

by rexworld

Yeah, that delay is what concerns me. Hosting the search ourselves means we can ensure the index is no more than maybe fifteen to 30 minutes behind, whereas a crawl-based solution like Google won't stay that current.

The only sources they crawl that hard tend to be the news sites. And even then they can make the assumption that the latest stuff is linked off the front door, so they really don't have to crawl the news sites too deep. Whereas we get new replies to old threads that might not ever surface onto the front door of the discussion center, so the only way a crawl could find them is a deep crawl down thru the whole site.

The alternative is to send Google the updates directly (they do this with a number of sites, to keep the latest data loaded into the Google index without requiring a Googlebot crawl of the site). We've been exploring that option as well, not just for TR but other CNET sites as well.

by stress junkie

First, I hope you don't mind me mentioning the sourceforge.net site. They don't compete with you so I figured it would be okay.

I don't know the details of how they do their site search. I'm not proficient at HTML so I don't want to study their source code to find out exactly what they do.

Maybe, as you say, their search is directly with Google. I thought it might be a Google product like desktop Google software.

by jaqui

http://www.vasoftware.com/sourceforge/

they own the software.
they will license you to use software starting in the area of $100,000.00 USD/pa
they do maintain the software, not only making bugfixes, and updates available, the install them.
( looked into it a few years back )
nice system, but costly.
more people accessing the more it costs.

by oz_media

I can Google anytime, infact Firefox has a very unobtrusive Google, Dictionary search in the browser.

What I hate is when you go to a site and see a search box, you are in a hurry to find your answers on THAT site and then get a page of Google hits in return, and you have to use the OTHER search box or check WEB or SITE search boxes for local searches. I think it's one of the most annoying features of any site.

If you want answers to tech issues, you can search Google newsgroups for them (FAR BETTER than the basic Google Web search)www.deja.com

A good deal of the Tech Q&A questions I reply to I can find on deja, BUT, having that as a search option on this site would bother me.

The way I see it, these are OTHER websites. If YOU can't provide the info on your own site, either recommend and even link to another or just go without.

I have my very own web browser and search engines, I can't stand it when a site points me to a search engine or displays results found elsewhere.

My dime, didn't cost you anything.

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