What do you use for site search?

Message from hamiltda@ucmail.uc.edu

Message from tkaufman@umaryland.edu

In order to improve Internet searches for the University of Maryland campus community, CITS purchased and implemented a Google Search Appliance (GSA). Now when someone puts a request in a search box on one of the UMB web sites it goes through the new appliance. The GSA provides finer control of the search process. Specific sites can be excluded. The paid advertisements and search results on the top and right of the results screen will be replaced with University sites that can be promoted. Key words can be used to target specific sites. “Index biasing” will be used to list local or most relevant results first. Thanks, Trisha Kaufman Asst. Director, Web Development Center for Information Technology Services University of Maryland ________________________________

We use the Google Search Appliance - limit 500K. Our central search, units on campus and outside domains (.orgs), all use the box. The search queries and results are all presented through a customized web interface. We use the Keywordmatch and related queries features to improve results. We allow individual management of unit collections but the system administration and default collection is managed through our office. We also have to monitor it on a regular basis for new deployments of sites to exclude duplicate indexes of same content. I find this process has become less time intensive as the service and our URL pattern matching has matured. The duplicate hosts function has reduced the bogus URL count quite a bit also. We have run this box for over six years and will review its usage and purpose on campus again this summer prior to renewal.

We could not afford the appliance, so we use regular Google Custom Search and it's working just fine for us. We can extend it to all domains within the environment, and we can narrow it to a particular site as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Cathy Finn-Derecki Director of Web Communications University Relations and Communications University of Mary Washington 1301 College Avenue Fredericksburg, VA 22401 cderecki@umw.edu mobile: 540-842-7216 ________________________________________ From: The EDUCAUSE Web Administrators Constituent Group Listserv [WEB@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of J Bell [Jbell@KSU.EDU] Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 10:30 AM To: WEB@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WEB] What do you use for site search? We use the Google Search Appliance - limit 500K. Our central search, units on campus and outside domains (.orgs), all use the box. The search queries and results are all presented through a customized web interface. We use the Keywordmatch and related queries features to improve results. We allow individual management of unit collections but the system administration and default collection is managed through our office. We also have to monitor it on a regular basis for new deployments of sites to exclude duplicate indexes of same content. I find this process has become less time intensive as the service and our URL pattern matching has matured. The duplicate hosts function has reduced the bogus URL count quite a bit also. We have run this box for over six years and will review its usage and purpose on campus again this summer prior to renewal.

Tanya,

We use the Google Mini Appliance and it has served us very well. It has proven very reliable and flexible enough that we haven't had to consider going to the Search Appliance.


Luis

Luis Menchu
Web Services Manager
Portland Community College
971-722-4764

The California State University system uses the Google Search Appliance 7007 5M to enable search across the 23 campuses and the Chancellor's Office. Each campus has the ability to retrieve search analytics, setup key matches (just like google ads.) The search appliance allows us to aggregate content at the system level simply by creating a site collection and adding the campus web addresses that we want included in search results. We also implement localized searches for sub sites. For a quick sample, search at http://www.calstate.edu, http://www.calpoly.edu or http://www.sfsu.edu Hope that this is helpful. Gerard Greenidge Team Leader, Web Development California State University Office of the Chancellor Mobile: (562) 519-2639 Desk: (562) 951-4466 ggreenidge@calstate.edu ________________________________________

Message from hamiltda@ucmail.uc.edu

We use the Google Search Appliance much like Gerard (California State U) and J (Kansas State University). I like that we can add multiple domains/subdomains to the same search and also that we can allow individuals to maintain their own collections. We maintain a large keymatch list within Excel and then import the associated .csv each time we make changes (from our university communications office). The collection managers maintain their own keyword lists and can run their own reports. We use the duplicate hosts function and related queries function as well as a host load function that limits the times the appliance crawls servers - we had a problem with too much crawling after the last software upgrade. We also try to monitor the search, because sometimes the appliance gets caught in a loop on sites that use scripting - particularly for dynamically pulling events or items/publications (because they don't contain a "last updated" declaration in the header of the pages). This causes a sharp increase in number of documents searched and can prevent the appliance from searching "real" new content. This hasn't happened since we slowed the crawling, though. ---- Donna Hamilton Ass't. Vice President, Web Communications University of Cincinnati PO Box 210141 | Cincinnati, OH 45221-0141 | 513-556-3349 Campus Location: 3300 Two Edwards Center Visit us at www.uc.edu

Message from mckelvey@lclark.edu

On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 at 3:58 PM, Tom Worthington wrote: