6 Reasons Not to Use Google SiteSearch

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

Apologies if I misread the statement about universal search in http://community.joomla.org/co...t-two.html but the absence of any search, currently on the joomla.org sites (apart from the googlesearch on the non-joomla powered parts) and the lack of reply to posters asking where the search was gave this conclusion. (Especialy as googlesearch wouldnt work on the new joomla.org sites until google has the chance to catch up see point 2 above)

I now see that even though there is no link the joomla search hasnt been disabled so if you want to you can search
www.joomla.org here
community.joomla.org here
developer.joomla.org [uel=http://developer.joomla.org/index.php?option=com_search]here

While I agree the points mentioned can be an issue, I think the answer really depends on your site. For example, I don't have private areas so do not need to worry about restricting data. I find that Google custom search is better for my readers. I can include or excludes the pages and sites I want. As example, I've added a fair number of related sites, including competitors, as I find they have valuable info that people may need.

I also like that I can get what people searched for in my analytics. I don't recall if Joomla has this feature, but I find it useful for finding new article ideas. My biggest issue is I think the Google custom search documentation is written more towards a programmer. I'd like to make better use of their "refinement" feature.

It's leaping to an incorrect conclusion to say the term "universal search" means Google SiteSearch. There hasn't been a lack of response to people asking about where the search is?in fact in that same blog post is the explanation "It's coming, but not before we complete the rollout of the other sites." So that's the only "official statement" so far and there's been no mention of how the search will work or what will be used. Please don't extrapolate conclusions from incomplete bits of information and turn them into gospel.

I have to be honest, I have never been too enamored with Joomla search. By default it does an "any" search which is completely different than what people who are used to Google expect. However, I have tried the Google search and it works great MOST of the time, but I found that it often has blind spots. At least with the Joomla search you know that if the search word is in the database it will show up in the search, but Google's search relies on indexing so like was pointed out above... if its not in the index... you're out of luck.

I think the Joomla search in general lags behind in terms of robustness compared to the rest of the product, but maybe the next version will have some improvements.

Some good points being made. I've been researching Google Site Search, and I have to point out the following:

It does not have to be 2-3 days behind. You can actually force it to reindex your site from the administrative section. (look up "on demand indexing")

You are forgetting alot of the reasons why you SHOULD consider using google too... It is a vastly more intelligent search engine.