October 15, 2008 – 3:56 pm
Piece by piece we’re trying to improve our google search tool. We can finally announce a few features we think will please you.
Simpler search queries
It’s been a major bugbear that we’ve had to include the long and unfriendly google account codes in our search forms and query strings, however, we’re now inserting these at the server level, so that you don’t have to do it in your code. This has two effects:
- You can create simple url searches like this
http://search.unimelb.edu.au/?q=economical
which not only look better, they make sense, are easier to insert and maintain and don’t break in emails.
- …and following on from that is simpler search forms. There is an updated include file that you can add to your existing site, and all the template downloads have been amended. It will have no effect at all apart from nice clean code – but what maintainer doesn’t like that?
Smarter search queries
Search by site is commonly requested, happy to say, it now seems to work! You could always manually add something like site:lib.unimelb.edu.au to your search query and it would restrict to that url, but that’s not much help if you want to create a site search form. To achieve this, simply add this variable into your search form: <input type="hidden" name="as_sitesearch" value="lib.unimelb.edu.au" /> substituting your own domain/path in the value. Whatever you do, DONT use this to turn the search box at the top of your page into a site-restricted search, that will confuse your user – put it in a different place and clearly label it as a ‘your-site search’.
A similar approach can be used to search for particular filetypes. Not a common request, but just to place it on the record, inserting this field: <input type="hidden" name="as_filetype" value="pdf" />will yield results of pdf files only.
October 9, 2008 – 7:50 am
This morning we made some changes to the University’s google search tool which will deliver us more control and fix an annoying bug or two. Impact is expected to be virtually nil – users should not experience any degradation of service, but the following features should be added.
- The search term will remain in the input field
- Faceted searches will be introduced (initially News, Events, Experts)
- Domains outside unimelb.edu.au, but still part of the University can be added
- We can start gathering stats on our searches
- Greatly simplified search query syntax
The added control this change will give us means that we will be able to add more features over time. We’ll let you know as they happen.
For a little while at least, it seems like the ‘interim’ search is going to stay. So we might as well get to know it a bit better! Some people have complained about the lack of features compared to the old search engine, but I can assure you that they are still there, just not as obvious as before.
If you’ve ever used the advanced search operators in Google, then you’ll be pleased to know that they work here too. Check out this Google Cheat Sheet, which gives you a few simple tools that allow you to conduct more powerful searches. The only things that don’t work on our local search are the ‘calculator operators’.
February 15, 2008 – 1:40 pm
You wouldn’t need to be observant to have witnessed the anguished death throes of our Ultraseek search engine this past fortnight. It’s been up again, down again many times – at the moment it’s displaying some sort of awful error output. Not a good look.
As most of the University’s templated pages point to this search engine, I’ve been very keen to release a replacement include file so that everyone can update their sites, but one last piece in the puzzle has been holding me up for months.
I give up! This zip file contains a number of interim include files that will update pages on the new ‘07′ standard template as well as the old ‘blue curve’ standard template. Site admins should copy the files to their appropriate folders, (perhaps keep a backup of the old files!).
Download the new include files.
What do you mean, ‘interim’?
As soon as the aforementioned piece of of the puzzle falls into place, a new version of the include files will be released. It will sport a much simpler URL which will provide longevity to our search engine. The interim include will not stop working any time soon, but when the next/final include is released, it should be updated.
The files have been tested and are working in two sites, so as long as your templates haven’t been messed with too much, you should have no troubles. All the same – remember what I said about backups ;-)
September 26, 2007 – 4:15 pm
Welcome to the search engine blog.We have created this fine blog in to keep all those people interested in search (yes, both of you!) up to date with what is in the works for search.unimelb.edu.au.You will notice that there is a Google customised search now available at http://search.unimelb.edu.au. Over time this engine will be modified to provide a range of exciting options, finally becoming self-aware in 2011.