Free Site Search Engine

If you have a large website with lots of pages and a good mixture of material, creating a good navigation scheme for it can be very hard. How can you get your visitors to the information they want without lots of confusing labels, pictures and links? Site search engines provide this capability.

Here's a simple utility which can quickly create site specific search engine for you. This is a Windows program that you download and run on your home computer. It works with the local copy of your website and creates the additional HTML file which contains all necessary code and data to add search capabilities to your site.

You can also use this program as a free site map builder, since the created file can act like a site map with search capabilities. See below for more details.

You can run this free site search engine on any Web server (both Internet and Intranet) and even on your hard drive. The only requirement is the JavaScript enabled browser. You have full control over the appearance of the search results page. And you can specify which pages of your site need to be included in the search index.

Download Site Search Engine 1.12 [204 KB]

It's the single Windows EXE file that requires no installation and can be run from anywhere on your hard drive.

The main program window is shown below.

Here's how to create your site search engine quickly...

1) Select the initial directory that contains the copy of your website, choose the desired file extensions, and press the "Make List" button.
The program will place the list of found files into the "Input Files" box.

2) Review the file list and uncheck the files that shouldn't be included in the search index.

3) Choose the name of the output file (default is "ss.html"), select the type of links in the results page, and press the "Create" button. The output index file will be created in the directory you have selected in the first step.

Other features

Reducing the size of the output file
This site search engine is the most suitable for small and medium websites. (In fact, it can index up to 8400 pages.) If your site has hundreds of pages and the output index file is too big and takes too long time to load, you can reduce its size by ignoring some words...

• "Casual" - if checked, words appearing in the HTML file only once won't be included in the index. This can reduce the size of output file in half.
• "With digits" - if checked, words containing digits won't be included in the index file and will be ignored when searching your site.
• "Plurals" - if checked, the site search engine will consider plurals to be the same as singulars, and only one variation will be included in the index file.
• "Length under" - you can specify that short words (under 2-4 letters) won't be included in the index file and will be ignored when searching your site. The value 1 makes the site search engine include all words.

Creating the site map
You can also use this program as a free site map builder. If you select "Site Map" instead of "Search Engine", the program will create the plain HTML file (no JavaScript) containing links to all selected pages. You can consider this file as a basis for creating your site map.

Empty list
By default, if the search box is empty, the results page will contain links to all indexed pages. If you prefer the empty list of files in this case, check the box "Empty list."

Wildcards
You can use wildcards when searching:

• ? stands for any character.
• * stands for any number of characters (including no characters at all).

Non-English pages
Site search engine correctly indexes non-English HTML pages which use high ASCII codes (128...255) to represent national characters.
Notes for non-English pages:

• The "Plurals" check box works only with english words.
• You may need to add the correct
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=XXX">
  tag to the HEAD section of ss.html manually.

Command line parameters
The program now accepts command line parameters, so that you can automate your work...
  ss [-dDIR] [-eEXT] [-sC] [-oFILE] [-aC] [-wC] [-pC] [-mC] [-uN] [-nM] [-iFILE] [-c] [-x]
where...

• DIR - Directory. If it contains spaces, enclose it in quotation marks.
• EXT - File Extensions separated by semicolons.
• C - Checkbox value (0 or 1).
• FILE - Filename.
• N - Length under (1 - 4).
• M - Links type (1 - 5)

Notes:

• All command line parameters are optional.
• The options correspond with the window controls and their underlined characters.
• The order of options isn't significant.
• If the -dDIR (Directory) option is omitted, the -c (Create) and -x (Exit) options will be ignored.
• The option -x means create and exit, i.e. it's the same as -c -x
• You can use multiple -iFILE options to exclude multiple files from indexing.

Example:
  ss -d"c:\My Documents\HTML" -ehtm;html -imap.htm -icontact.htm -x

The simplest way to make up the command line is to start the program without any parameters, make your work and then copy to the command line only the options you've changed during your work.

If you're concerned about the appearance of the search results page, you can freely edit the output file (change colors, fonts, add your images, etc.).

To place the search box on your page, use the following code...

You can freely modify all elements of this code. Only make sure that the name of the input text field is "s" and the action attribute contains the proper path to the previously created index file.

For example, if your page resides in a subdirectory of the initial directory, you should use action="../ss.html" instead.

You can also use text links...

In this case, the search window will initially contain links to all the pages within your site, and so it will act like a site map with search capabilities.

Of course, you need to upload the index file to your server. And don't forget to rebuild the index file after significant modifications of your site.

This page contains the search box where you can try this site search engine. For more information on using the search window, see Site Search Help.

FAQ

1) How can I perform all searching in the same window/frame without opening any additional windows?

Use the following code to place the search box on your page...

<form action="ss.html">
<b>Search this site</b><br>
<input type="text" name="s">
<input type="submit" value="Go">
</form>

and replace the following code in ss.html...

function C(l){
 if(BW && !BW.closed) {BW.location.href=l;BW.focus();}
 else BW=window.open(l,"");
}

with...

function C(l){
 location.href=l;
}

2) I use frames on my site and would like to place the search box in the top frame (name=TOP), search results - in the left frame (name=LEFT), and the selected page - in the right frame (name=RIGHT)

Use the following code to place the search box in the top frame...

<form action="ss.html" target="LEFT">
<b>Search this site</b><br>
<input type="text" name="s">
<input type="submit" value="Go">
</form>

and replace the following code in ss.html...

function C(l){
 if(BW && !BW.closed) {BW.location.href=l;BW.focus();}
 else BW=window.open(l,"");
}

with...

function C(l){
 parent.RIGHT.location.href=l;
}

If you want to remove the search box from the search results frame, replace the entire <form>...</form> tag in ss.html with...

<form>
<input type="hidden" name="s">
</form>

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