I found some down time this weekend to take care of a lingering annoyance: site search on my blog.
The problem: Typepad has easy instructions for adding Google site search to your Typepad blog, and it's free, so I added it in a couple of months ago. I assumed that it worked perfectly since it's...you know....it's Google. Then, after some recent event blogging, I idly searched my blog for the phrase "open source." Zero results. (Zero results?!? Are they kidding?!?) I went to Google's index request page and asked that they index my site. Still no search results after a month. I went and re-requested. Still no search results after two more weeks. What made this even more frustrating is that those same open source blog posts did show up in a google.com web search on the phrase "christine herron." I ended up removing the site search from my blog.
The recent solution: I indexed my site using FreeFind, then added the FreeFind search link to my left menu bar. Both tasks together took about six minutes to complete. I went to my blog and searched my blog for the phrase "open source" again. This time, I had 117 results. That sounds much more like it, though I know that this must represent some double- or triple-counting. (Not every post uses that phrase.) Still, I'd rather have something show up multiple times in the search results than no times in the search results. I did use the free version, which means that there are three FreeFind ads in the header of my search results page. If I get tired of those ads, I can get rid of them later for $5/month.
This arrangement is subject to change, but the solution looks very satisfying upon initial implementation. As a bonus, I'll now start getting periodic reports on keyword search activity....extra nice.
Tags: christine herron christine.net space jockeys technology freefind google typepad
