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Adding Search Funtionality To Your Site

Having a search engine for your site will enable your visitors to quickly and easily find what they are looking for, without having to navigate through a long list of options.

Usability studies show us that more than half of all web users are search-dominant, meaning that they will go straight to the search box when they enter your site, rather than try to find information following your navigation links. They are not interested in looking around your site but rather in finding what they want as fast as possible.

We recommend that you follow these guidelines when setting up a search engine on your site:

• Make the search function easily available from every page on your site.
• Try to include a search box in the page itself, instead of just a text link that takes you to a search page. The search box shape is easily recognizable and users will find it much faster than a text link. If you don�t want to use a search box in all your pages, use a search box in your homepage and a link to a search page from your interior pages.
• Place the search box in a consistent an easy to find location across your site. Based on the observation of numerous important websites, the preferred location seems to be the top right corner of the page.
• Try to make the search box wide enough (between 20 and 25 characters) to accommodate longer queries.
• Label the search button next to the search box with the word "Search" Finally, please note that installing search functionality is no excuse for designing poor navigation menus (don�t forget the other half of your visitors, who are likely to follow links rather than search).

Using Google on your site:

Google also has a free feature called Google Site Search http://www.google.com/services/websearch.html that allows you to use Google.s search engine on your site, giving your visitors the option of searching your site or searching the web. It is very easy to install: you just cut and paste an HTML snippet of code and you.re set. However, this feature has its drawbacks. The main one is that only pages that are already in Google�s database will be displayed in the results, and you can�t instruct Google to crawl your site at your desired frequency.

Instead, you will have to wait until Google crawls your site before more of your pages can be added to Google�s database. Therefore, Google is a good option if most of your pages are already indexed and you don�t update your site that often. A good benefit of using Google SiteSearch, though, is that you can make it work in tandem with your Adsense account. What this basically means is that if your visitors use your Google-powered search engine, you will earn revenue every time they click on the .sponsored links. shown in the results pages.