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defigio@mit.edu

In working on a new site operating in maintenance mode, the search results are not returning pages we'd expect them to. (e.g., a search for "taxes" does not return the page with the h1 page title "Taxes".) Is this because we're working in maintenance mode? Is there a way to force an index of the current version of the site? And moving forward, because there are no meta tag or keyword modules available, is there any method for customizing the default search results we get from the Google appliance?

Thanks in advance!

6/26/14

csgiles@mit.edu

There's a trade-off between using Drupal's built-in search vs. Google Search Appliance.

Drupal's built-in search gives you more configuration options and relies on internal indexing, but the search is based on whole words, so a search for "testing" will not return uses of "test". You can, however, have more control over certain configuration options (Configuration -> Search and Metadata -> Search Settings) and manually control the indexing of your site.

Google Search Appliance is more powerful in terms of results (i.e. a search for "testing" will return uses of "test" as well as "testing"), but relies on the appliance's ability to reach your site to index it, meaning your site is only crawled once it is viewable by the public. As for configuring the results, the algorithm is in Google's hands. You can configure the title of the results page and the number of items per page, but beyond that, you can adjust the look via CSS but that's it.

6/30/14

aran@mit.edu

any way to exclude taxonomy feeds from google search appliance?

they are cluttering up search results with useless rss feed links.

TIA for any help here, below is a link to an example, searching on a profs name, 2 out of the 3 topmost links are what most would consider, garbage.

http://mit.edu/aran/www/wogan-search-results.jpg

8/20/14