3. On Site Search

RKT Design Principles	www.mibsoftware.com
3. On Site Search
Essential way to find relevant topics Less "noise" in results. No extraneous hits The RKT tools allow efficient incremental index updates
The well-known search engines cover less than 35% of the entire WWW -NEC Research Institute, 1998

<<Previous - - - Next>>

Explanation
A full-text search must be provided, since users often find a word search the fastest and most efficient way to locate specific topics.

The search must be "on-site" because the well-known general purpose "search engines" such as Alta-Vista and HotBot are estimated to cover less than 35% of the WWW. What they index is often "stale"; it may take several weeks for changes to your pages to show up.

An "all words in query" search is adequate. The advanced "BOOLEAN" query features of the major search engines are only needed to narrow down hundreds of thousands of irrelevant hits. If a visitor uses your on-site search, then they already have a targeted, high quality "short list." The hits they get will be highly relevant.

How the RKT Tools Help
The RKT tools include tools to create searchable indexes, that allow incremental updates. Form based access to the indexes is provided using cgi scripts.

3. On Site Search

Essential way to find relevant topics

Less "noise" in results. No extraneous hits

The RKT tools allow efficientincremental index updates

The RKT tools allow efficient
incremental index updates