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Nonprofit Resources
We’ve set up the free trial search engine for each of the search engines reviewed in the “Site Searches on a Shoestring” article. Each search box searches the entire Alder Consulting site. Each has been configured to be as close to the Alder Consulting site in look and feel as we can get it. These searches are easy to set up - it is well worth trying a few against your own site to see what works best for your site.
To see a good comparison of result formats, try searching on “Audubon.”
Atomz (www.atomz.com/)
Atomz is the best of the free searches. It offers many options to configure
both the search and the results - notice that the results are in a template
that matches the Alder site. The summaries for each link in the results show first
my metadata page descriptions, and then matching page exerpts.
FreeFind (www.freefind.com)
Freefind also has a very respectable search. We've completely customized the
template that the search results appear in. This is the free version;
you can get rid of the ads by paying a monthly fee. The site map is an interesting
bonus, particularly for a small site like Alder - but it can be removed if you like.
Google (www.google.com/services/websearch.html)
When we first tested this search against Alder Consulting (about four months ago),
nothing but the home page
of Alder Consulting was indexed, making the search worthless. The Alder site has
since moved up in the Google rankings, and it is now finding most of the pages.
At a minimum, it takes a month or two to index a site that it hadn't previously
found. It's possible to add an Alder logo to the results page (above the Google
logo), but we think it looks worse than not having it - so we've left it off.
Master.com (www.master.com/texis/master/app/apps.html)
Again, we've completely customized the page to match the Alder look and feel, and include
the site navigation. The Master.com logo and links on the results page can be removed for
a small fee.
PicoSearch (www.picosearch.com)
This is the free version; the paid version would show the same results without
the Picosearch logo or the ads. Both the free and paid versions both have
very limited customization options, however: only background and font colors.
SpiderLine (www.spiderline.com)
SpiderLine is a great value for the money. It doesn't have any free
search; this engine is their
30 day trial version. In a example of their great customer service, they have
donated Alder a version which doesn't expire to allow you to try it out. The template is
extremely configurable - you can really customize every detail - so we could undoubtedly
make the results listing match the look of the Alder site even better than this.
Whatuseek (http://sitelevel.whatuseek.com/)
The results template is completely customizable, but
it's a bit more complicated than the others (so we didn't take the time to do it).
The paid version does not include the ads.
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