Search Bots

Spiderline Searches Inward

By Brian Proffitt

With all of the hullabaloo about which search engine can search the Web in the best fashion, it's a pleasant surprise to find a service that will let you set up a powerful search engine for your site.

Spiderline is a service that will let you do just that: integrate a fully functional index and search engine on your own Web site that will generate results on pages that have your site's design. The advantage to this approach is that you acquire the functionality and your visitors may not be aware that they ever left your site.

The concept is startlingly simple: once a Webmaster registers a site, permission is given to have Spiderline's search engine crawl through the site and sift and organize information into a master index that is physically stored on Spiderline's servers.

Clients are able to choose the look of the search interface and also set up the results pages that Spiderline generates to match that of the client site. Clients can also control which pages will accept the Spiderline crawlers, when the crawling will occur, and which homonyms, synonyms, misspelled words can be incorporated into the search vocabulary.

What makes this service appealing is twofold: for sites 500 pages and under, the service is free and there is no client-side software to implement. All of the coding is done on the Spiderline side--only a single section of HTML code will need to be cut and pasted to the client's site to display the search interface.

Pricing for 500-page sites is free for unlimited queries--with the caveat that the Spiderline logo is displayed. Otherwise, the search engine is fully functional. For sites that are larger, or don't wish to have the logo, Spiderline's cost structure is a penny ($.01) per search, plus an additional $25/year fee.

Given the increased amount of larger Web sites on the Internet, this service is a good way to start organizing all of the vast information that can be found out there.