As you develop your website and the amount of content grows, finding specific bits and pieces rapidly become more of an issue. This can be a problem not only for your users, but also for your content managers. But, why do you need an on site search engine when you gone to all of the trouble of categorizing everything into a nice neat menu system?

Why does my website need search capability?

Very simply, Search is the user’s lifeline when the navigation system fails to direct them to what they need quickly.

In our development projects, one of the biggest issues we have is getting to that one piece of content that requires attention. The project is for a Medical Tourism website, with a database that contains medical procedures and services, partners, hospitals and hotels. These are assigned into categories for the menu system to make it easy for a user to narrow down a list of services before selecting their exact Medical Service. But some visitors want to get directly to the information about the procedure that brought them here in the first place.

The CMS allows us to build a package for our visitors that includes hotel, flights, transfers, information on the Medical facility, additional services and of course, information on the procedure itself. But when we find an issue with the content, and need to get to that one piece of data that requires attention, the process of looking for that bit of information becomes a chore. And with out a proper on site search engine, this could also end up being a chore for our server as it eats up large amounts or processing power and memory.

These are just two of the many examples that demonstrated to us the need for an on site search engine.

What to look for in a Search Engine

Again, simplicity is the key, but there should also be careful consideration to usability. A literal search engine is nice to have, but can reduce the usability of your site in that they are usually unable to handle typos, plurals, hypens, etc. So look for a search engine that is forgiving of the search terms in relationship to these variants. Many search engines can be configured either way by default.

Also steer away from engines that prioritize results based on the number of times the search term is found in a page, rather than on the importance of the document.

Other features that should be considered are:

• Easy installation & setup on your site
• Template functionality - retains the look and feel of your website
• Auto & Manual re-indexing of your content
• Reporting on your visitors queries
• Simple & Advanced search options including Boolean expressions
• High Performance - doesn’t slow down your site during a search request

There are more features offered by many of the popular on site search engine providers. The best way forward, is to Google “website search engine” and start comparing the features offered against your needs.