Engagement without interactivity
Searching and being searchable
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Engagement and Interactivy
Jeff Williamson
Northern Virginia Community College
www.nvcc.edu/home/nvwillj/html-interactivity/
nvwillj@nvcc.edu
Searching and being searchable
Search is an engaging function on websites - it encourages users to explore the site for their needs, instead of trying to follow what the site author felt were user needs. It's hard to think of sites that shouldn't have search features.
And yet many don't, and many more don't have have search functions that work well. Here are some ideas to get you started on making your sites searchable and search-engine friendly.
1. Local search-abillity: Web server search functions
Some popular web servers include Apache, Netscape, and Microsoft Internet Information Server (MIIS). Each of them has different built-in search functions - you'll have to ask your host for documentation.
Not very helpful, I know, but really, a lot of the general search abilities are handled by the network administrators, and in my experience, they have varied a lot.
A good rule of thumb: If you can get your local search functions to work, they are likely give better - or at least more updated - results than any remote service.
2. Remote searchability: Register your site; steal this code
If you can't get a good search function to work with your web server, you can still have a search function on your web site, just by using existing search services.
First, of course, you have to register your page with existing search engines. You can do this on most sites by hunting around for a link that says something like "Add a site" and following their directions - they're different for every service. Or you can try a multiple-engine submission site such as www.submit-it.com.
Then you can copy the search form code from the search engine home page. Or from someone else's page - lots of folks have multiple-search engine pages. You will probably have to read and tinker with the code - by changing relative references to absolute references, for example.
I have some code you can use for the Altavista search engine.
Wait - is this legal? My guess - and its only that - is that it is. When you build a form for a search engine on your site you're driving traffic to that search engine and your users will see an ad on the search engine when they get their results. When you copy code from a personal site like the two links above, you are snapping up some work that someone else noodled out, so maybe you should send a thank-you or give credit, but really, even that person's work relies on the search engine's functions - it's not entirely original, either.
3. Another way: webmaster-specific search services
Like everything else in page authoring, there are services to provide what your ISP lacks. At least two free services will build a site index of your site and provide you with the code to set up a search function on your home page.
Search Button - www.searchbutton.com
Picosearch - www.picosearch.comMore info on PicoSearch and some others at www.builder.com/Authoring/MoreStupid/ss09.html
Advantage: Because these smaller services supposedly build indexes on request, and because you can rebuild services on request, they may be able to stay a bit more current than the much larger and less frequently updated search engines.
Disadvantage: You're asking your user to use a search service s/he has probably never used before and will not know the syntax for.
4. Make your pages friendly to bookmarks and search engines.
Probably we've gone over the importance of the <TITLE> attribute,
so you remember that this is what will show on your users' bookmarks.
It is also what will show as the headline listing for many search engines.
What about the rest of the listing - the paragraph-looking thing below? That has been created by either by the META tags or the first text in the body if the META tags are absent. As shown above the first text in your body is unlikely to work well as a site description. So if you really need your site to be described well in search engines, you need META tags in the <HEAD> elements of the page. More information on <META> tags is at
Do you need META tags on all your pages? They can't hurt - but I think it just depends on your audience. The class above is something I only use with students who've already registered at the university; I'm not trying to reach everyone on the Internet. So I don't really care how it indexes.
A site I did for a conference did need to index well, so I worked up the META tags to have it list better.
Framed sites especially need to have META tags on their front pages; otherwise your little description will read something like "Your browser doesn't seem to support frames..."