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Sep
15
2008
6 Reasons Not to Use Google SiteSearch
Written by Steve Burge   
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Google SiteSearchQuite a few people have been asking lately about the benefits of using Google SiteSearch.


In theory, it's great idea because people can use Google's own search engine to search your site without leaving it. There's even a slick module that allows you do this easily on Joomla 1.5. This should produce more accurate results, right?


Wrong. Here's six reasons why you're better off using your own site search rather than relying on Google:

1) It's results are only as good as your metadata

There are many ways for metadata can suck from uninformative titles and descriptions to over-long site names. If you have that kind of site, then Google SiteSearch will render poor results compared to Joomla's own search.

2) It's 2, 3 or more days behind

A popular blog might gets its new posts indexed within a few hours but most sites will need to wait several days or more.

3) It'll miss many results on large sites

Googles shows 36 million results for MySpace profile pages, but that site is thought to have over 300 million profiles, meaning that only around 10% of the site is indexed. The larger your site, the smaller the percentage of pages that will be indexed and the less useful Google SiteSearch becomes. Joomla's forum which uses SiteSearch has 1,363,491 posts but only 392,000 results in Google so at the best it's only 28% indexed.

4) You may see pages that don't exist

Check the Google results for your domain using the site:example.com operator and you might see quite a few pages that don't really exist. Here's one example.

5) You lose the ability to drill down

Joomla 1.0 with Advanced Search or Joomla 1.5 with default search both allow you to only search inside content or only inside a particular component. With SiteSearch you can't fine tune your results to delve only into your forum, calendar or photo gallery. The best it can do is drill down by subdomains.

6) You lose the ability to restrict access

If you have a private area to the site, you aren't able to transfer Joomla's user permissions over to Google. The results for a guest must be the same as those for site members.

 

 

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Comments  

 
#1 Al Hatch 2008-09-15 14:19
These are some important points I had not considered. However, it's been my experience that there are many large sites whose own search engine is worse than Google's.
For example, conduct a search for videos you know exist on a site such as Space.com or LiveScience.com. Often, the search will return zero hits.
Now go to Google's advanced search page and enter the same search term, restricting the domain to Space.com or LiveScience.com. Google will find the video! Thus, it is possible that Google will index your site better than your own database or whatever search engine you use on your own.
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#2 Steve Burge 2008-09-15 14:27
Hi Al - that's true. There are some terrible internal search engines. I do prefer Google's search of forum.joomla.org to the default phpBB3 search for example.

Particularly as sites get large, it get can get very database intensive and error-prone to do it yourself.
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#3 Brian Teeman 2008-09-15 17:41
I hadnt really considered this till now but it's ging to be interesting on joomla.org as they have announced that they have abandoned joomla's own search and are using google instead across all of the sites.

Personaly I think it's a bad idea for joomla.org to do this as imho it says to perspective users that joomla's own search isnt any good.
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#4 Robert_ 2008-09-16 00:34
One of the most crucial reasons IMHO is the indeterminable risk of Google dropping some parts or even all of your site from their index in case you site happens to lose the grace of the Google gods - which leaves you without any search facility at all.
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#5 Klaus Nitsche 2008-09-16 01:01
Agree with Brian ... this sends a bad signal. "See, we don't think our search is useful, don't bother using it."

I just took a look - apparently they did make all the sites on j.org search-less, with the exception of the docs site which is running on Mediawiki. Couldn't find a way to use Google search though.

Shaking head wondering,
Zorro
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#6 Brad Baker 2008-09-16 19:50
Zorro,

Have you tried the Google Search box on the forum? It searches the Wiki (and other sites as well). You can even refine it to documentation once you search.
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#7 Cyrus 2008-09-17 02:54
Nice post, I stopped using the google search on my joomla sites a long time back. However I have noticed that the search module that comes with joomla is not the best either, specially if your building sites that in large are using a different component and not so much content - the default search module is useless.

Nice to have found this blog.. and hope to visit back often
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#8 Steve Burge 2008-09-17 10:21
Welcome Cyrus.

Hi Brad - yep, Google search can dig down by subdomains. I actually think you've made the right decision to have both searches on the forum. They both bring such different results that phpBB3 is better for some kinds of searches and Google for the others.
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#9 Brian Teeman 2008-09-17 11:02
I dont think anyone is saying it wasnt a good idea to use googlesearch on joomla.org if the default is no good, which according to others it isnt for mediawiki or phpbb3, but to replace the joomla search for joomla content, that just creates a bad inmpression?
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#10 severdia 2008-09-17 14:52
Brian, you state there has been an announcement regarding abandoning the Joomla search and using Google SiteSearch on Joomla.org. Can you please point out the source of this official statement?

This is simply not true.
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