Once again, I’ve been tinkering with the search on this site. We’ve gone through several iterations here, but I think this one is a keeper.
Most recently, I abandoned the SQL-based search system I was using and switched to using Google.
However, much to my surprise, it didn’t work that well. It didn’t return results for terms I knew were in the page I was looking for. I’ve done a little comparison between Google and the new system, and it’s confirmed my suspicions – there are several instances where Google just didn’t pick up on words. Go figure.
The new system is based on Swish-E, which is a phenomenally well-done, open source, indexing engine. It updates once an hour (swallowing 4,500 HTML files in 8 seconds) and it seems to just work, which is refreshing.
Try it out, and let me know if you have any problems or suggestions. I have some pretty cool refinements for the system coming, but I want to get it “in the wild” for a month or two before I start tinkering.