how to have search engine without ads in Dreamweaver

[Tony Whitehall]

How can I have search engine without ads in Dreamweaver?

I've installed and have been using Adobe's search engine, and it was working well.

But at some point, it began showing ads in search results that are irrelevant to my Web site, and those irrelevant ads appear before the search results that relate to my Web site.  And I noticed that at least one user searching my site was confused by seeing those irrelevant ads appearing in her search of my site, and she immediately gave up on searching my site, saying the search moter didn't work.

Also, I now have the problem that at some point, some words that appear on my Web site don't appear when I type them in the Google search motor window in my Web site.

It may be because I stopped indexing my site using Site Automator.  I think that was because Site Automator started charging for its site indexing service.

So my sitution is messy, and I fear this be one of those nightmarish technical problems that takes a major amount of difficult work and time to resolve.

I'm using Dreamweaver 2020.

Thanks.

Tony

[BenPleysier]

I've installed and have been using Adobe's search engine, and it was working well.

By @Tony Whitehall

Which search engine is that?

[Tony Whitehall]

I meant that I'm using Google Custom Search or Google Programmable Search (not Adobe).

Sorry for that mistake.

Tony

[B i r n o u]

what is the purpose of your search engine?

• to search the web in general ?
• search within your site ?
• search in specific lexicons ?

[Tony Whitehall]

The pupose of my search engine is to search within my site for words that appear on my site.

I don't need a search engine to search the Web, because there are already Hotbot, Lycos, Bing, Gigablast, Yahoo, Mama, DuckDuckGo, etcetera for that, so I don't need to 'reinvent the wheel'.

Tony 

[Nancy OShea]

The pupose of my search engine is to search within my site for words that appear on my site.

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In that case, you need a searchable database (MySQL, SQL or similar). Without one, you'll need to rely on commercial search engines like Google and Bing, etc...

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Nancy.

Which option is best for me?

Tony

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

@Tony Whitehall,

I have no idea what an "Adobe Search Engine" is particularly since Adobe doesn't make a search engine.  That's mainly Google's and Bing's turf.

Free Find has a free (with ads) and paid (without ads) search engine you could use.   Some of my clients use it with good results.  Just copy and paste their <form> into your web page.  Before you buy anything though, give the free version a try to see what you think of it.

https://www.freefind.com/

Hope that helps.

[Nancy OShea]

Add a custom Google search to your website.

https://support.google.com/programmable-search/answer/4513903?hl=en

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Nancy.

I mean that I have and am using Google (not Adobe) Custom Search, and that's what's causing the problems.

I'd rather use Google Custom Search instead of Free Find, because I already have worked much to learn and install and use Google Custom Search.  It makes more sense to me to use my existing search motor than starting from scratch with another search motor that I know nothing about.

How can I get Google Custom Search to index all of my Web pages, and to work without ads being imposed at the top of my search results?

Tony

[Nancy OShea]

This is not a Dreamweaver question.  Ask Google.

[Tony Whitehall]

Okay.

But it was logical for me to ask the question here first, in case Dreamweaver and Apple computers users prefer a particular search motor that's suited Dreamweave and Apple computers.

Tony 

[Nancy OShea]

But it was logical for me to ask the question here first, in case Dreamweaver and Apple computers users prefer a particular search motor that's suited Dreamweave and Apple computers.

==========

Tony, 

Search engines must work on ALL browsers and web devices -- Linux, Windows, Macs, Androids, iPhones, iPads, Surface Pros, etc...  If you want to know how Google search works, go to Google developers. Similarly, if you want to know how Bing works, ask Microsoft.

As for your website's unfortunate use of frames/framesets, lack of mobile-friendliness, insecure server and long list of other unacceptable problems, please hire an experienced web developer to help you.  Maintaining a proper web site is a profession, not a hobby.  And your site as it sits now is not helping you or anyone else. 

How does anyone know what painting title to search for if they've never visited your site before?  I can't even remember really famous painting titles. Do you see the problem with that?  Every artwork needs good keywords and a detailed description entered into a server-side database that people can readily search. Keywords, categories and descriptive phrases are what people search for, not titles. 

You also need an integrated shopping cart to make the online shopping experience as smooth and secure as possible for your customers.  Eventually, that will translate into more profits for you!   And if your budget is tight, consider letting them use  WordPress or some other off the shelf Content Management System (CMS) to help save time and money.  But whatever you decide, do not continue doing this yourself because what you have now is not working.

Good luck!

[B i r n o u]

how are your pages composed...

• are they placed in static HTML files, are they contained in a database... ???
• what is the volume of your pages... hundreds, thousands, ten thousands ???
• do you need a full text search, or by indexes ?...
• do your searches have to (or can) extend to peripheral sites ???

all these questions because sometimes it's really not necessary to use a third party engine... creating your own tool may not be complex at all

that's why I was posting my first comment earlier in this thread

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Birnou.

My files are static HTML files.

There are I think there are about 1,300 HTML pages and about 1,300 image files.

My Web site is for images, so what I need most is for my customers to be able to find particular images whose titles they know, by typing the title or part of the title in the search bar on the front page of my Web site. 

I only need ths search motor to work on my Web site.

I want the search results to include a thumbnail of the image that was searched for, as well as the title of the image, and a hyperlink to the page that contains the full-sized image.  (My site contains a few pages of thumbnails, with each thumbnail hyperlinking to pages that contain bigger, corresponding images, and descriptions of the images.)  I already have this setup, with Google Custom Search or Google Programmable Search (I'm not sure which of those I have) but as I explained the search results show irrelevant ads at the top of the page of search results, and some of the search results don't come up with any relevant results, despite me or my customers accurately typing the titles of the art – or accurately typing part of the titles of the art becing searched for on my Web site.

Tony

[Tony Whitehall]

It might help to clarify my problem by linking to my Web site, so here it is:  http://www.tonymax.net

My search motor only appears on the front page of my Web site – the page I just linked to.  It's the white, horizontal rectangle near the top of the page.

As an example of my two problems, if you type "purple ocean" in the search rectangle on the front page of my Web site, 1) a bunch of irrelevant ads appear, followed by some links to pages on my Web site, and 2) none of the search results show the two pages that exist on my Web site that contain images that contain the term "purple ocean", so the search engine isn't showing all of the relevant results that it should show.

There are many titles or parts of titles on my Web site that don't show any relevant results, despite me or other people typing the titles or part of the titles accurately in the search motor text rectangle.

Tony

[Jon Fritz]

Framesets are terrible for Search Engine Optimization (allowing search engine crawlers to fully index a site in a relevant way) and should simply never be used. They are also obsolete in modern HTML Standards (HTML5) and work poorly on mobile devices where responsive design is necessary.

I have the sneaking suspicion that is going to be the root of the problem with your Google search box.

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Jon.

That's bad news, because it means to solve the problems with my site search motor, I need to massively overhaul my Web site to switch from framesets to no frames.  It would take me weeks or even months of full-time work to accomplish.

Tony

[Tony Whitehall]

If my use of frames and framesets is the problem, then it doesn't matter if I use Google Custom Search, Google Programmable Search, Free Find, or some other search motor on my site.

You're implying that whatever search motor I have on my Net site won't work properly, as long as my site relies on frames and framesets.

Tony

[Nancy OShea]

Framesets are terrible...  I have the sneaking suspicion that is going to be the root of the problem with your Google search box.

=========

The search does not work for me because it's in a pop-up.  My browser blocks pop-ups by default as do most browsers these days.

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Nancy.

How can I make my Google Custom Search motor work without opening a new, popping window?

Tony

[Nancy OShea]

How can I make my Google Custom Search motor work without opening a new, popping window?

============

@Tony Whitehall,

1. Google says for best results, use valid HTML5 code. You do not have a valid HTML5 document. In fact, you don't have ANY document.  This causes browsers to be confused and behave in unexpected ways. 

2. Your Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) is a bit wonky too.  I'll let you and your web developer sort that out on Google's Control Panel.

3. Meanwhile, I created a GCSE of my own and programmed results to appear in Layout > Overlay.  Since my code is valid HTML5, my navbar's search engine works as expected.  Try it with search terms CSS, PHP or HTML.

https://alt-web.com/DEMOS/BS4.5-nav-gcse.php

This just goes to show you that GCSE does work when it's deployed properly inside a valid HTML5 document.  

[B i r n o u]

can you give me a direct link of the two pages that contain the purple ocean searched string

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Birnou.

Those two pages are at:

http://www.tonymax.net/pages-fine-art/PRINT-Arbutus-Purple-Ocean-Vertical-Simple.html

and

http://www.tonymax.net/pages-fine-art/PRINT-Arbutus-Purple-Ocean-Simple.html

Tony

[B i r n o u]

so if I understand correctly your context....  the name of the image and the name of the HTML file are related through a combination of prefix and postfix.

if for example your image is named image-foo, your image file will be named using the postfix -wtaermark as image-foo-watermark.jpg and the HTML file will use the prefix print- as print-image-foo.html.
Is this correct? if that is... please use the correct upper and lower case for namming them... Apache is sensible to it.

if so, I wouldn't bother with an engine, you just need to set up a parser written in PHP that will browse your server, looking for all the images in your own tree.

Once the filename is retrieved, the script cleans it up and places it in a database. (you can take advantage of this to store some metadata at the same time, EXIF data are well recoverable by the PHP). understand by cleans it up a way to fomate the name (rewrite it during the parsing if needed)

then your engine will inject SQL queries to find your images. and you will reconstruct the HTML page filename on the fly...

Does this make sense to you?