Seeker Search Engine Wizard

Using RootsWeb's GenSeeker Search Engine

Setting up the search engine on your website

Site Indexing (Why doesn't the form work now that I've added it to my site?)

Excluding selected pages from the search engine

At this time, the index created by the search engine has grown larger than the disks installed on the Seeker computer. Therefore, no new registrations will be accepted until the search facility has been upgraded.

Adding the Search Form to Your Site

The search form provided by the search engine registration can be added to any page within your site. You may add it to an existing page, or you can make the search form it's own separate page. Copy the form html to the clipboard. Open the page you are adding the form to in your HTML editor, and paste the HTML code whereever you want to place it on the page. Save the file and upload it to your account.

Site Indexing (Why doesn't the form work now that I've added it to my site?)

If you test the form after you've uploaded it, you'll most likely get a result of 0 (zero) matches. The search engine first has to index your site before it can give results. Indexing is done automatically...there is nothing you need to do for the indexing to take place. The search program runs the indexing program every 3-4 days in most circumstances.

Every time you add pages or edit existing pages, you'll need to wait for the indexing to take place before the results are shown in the search results.

Search Options

Your form has three search options: Any, All, and Boolean.

Any will return results for pages which have any of the listed words on it. FOr example, selecting "Any" and then searching for Moses Smith will return results for any page which contains the word Moses OR the word Smith.

All returns results for pages which contain every word input into the search form. A search using "All" and Moses Smith will show only those pages which contain the words Moses AND smith.

Note: This does not necessarily mean that the name Moses Smith will be on the page showing hits. A page containing the names Moses Jones and William Smith will show up as a "hit" because it contains both words, Moses AND Smith, though not necessarily in close proximity to each other

A boolean search allows for more complex searching. Examples of Boolean searches:

James and Smith: Gives pages which contain both Moses and Smith (much like the "All" search)

Moses or Smith: Gives pages which contain the word Moses or the word Smith (much like the "Any" search)

Moses not Smith: Gives pages which contain the word Moses BUT NOT the word Smith

Boolean searches also allow grouping using parentheses:

(Moses and Smith) or (William and Dennett): pages will contain either Moses and Smith or William and Dennett, but not necessarily both

(Moses and Smith) and (William and Dennett): pages must contain Moses, Smith, William, and Dennett to be returned as a "hit"

(Moses not Smith) or (William or Dennett): pages will contain Moses but not the word Smith OR they will contain the words William or Dennett

Excluding selected pages from the search engine

It is possible to exclude selected pages from the search engine by using meta tags. Meta tags contain two fields: name and content. The name of the meta tag should be "robots". The content, or value of the tag, gives the indexing robot instructions how to handle this page. There are four values for "content": index, follow, noindex, nofollow.

For a more complete discussion on meta tags and robots, visit http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/meta-user.html.