We needed a site search in a website we built recently, so we tried out Google Site Search and its great. Using the $US100 per year plan, we’re able to have a fully integrated search with about 24 hour turnaround on indexing.
Google site search looks at the XML sitemap (http://www.tribedesign.co.nz/sitemap) to get a list of pages to index and the priority of each page.
One of the main pages on the site is the portfolio, which is a dynamic page using ajax to load products. To make each product searchable we created a unique url for each product that includes the product details in the html then listed these with higher priority in the sitemap. We also took the FAQs and ‘Making it easy’ pages, which are full of rich text and split them into one page per FAQ/section to make the search results even more relevant.
It works very nicely with the search results embedded in the site and you wouldn’t even know it was powered by google, except by noticing the quality of the search results.
About TRIBE Design
Great things formed in metal begin with great design. And, making the best of design means being a trusted expert of the craft. Tribe is a design-led maker of metal products that touch an amazingly diverse range of people and purposes. From military metalwear to motoring memorabilia, fashion accessories to film props, competition medals to corporate gifts, it all starts and finishes in one place, right here in New Zealand.
