Internal Site Search ?

I am currently tasked to research a new search engine for our site. It was done in FrontPage 2000 and the search form from the extension it generated was shakey to say the least.

I was curious if anyone might have for ideas for a clean looking, ad free, internal search that would not leave my website.

I have tried one but it required hand coding each page in and that idea didn't go over well ... so I need something that can index upon need. I have tried house spider 4.7 and i could not get it to index after reading all possible instructions ... :-/

I have looked high and low and not found any answers (that are free) to this problem. I am thinking that my employer will lean more towards a free one ...

The Google Custom Search Engine is, of course, really good. It gives by far the best results of all others I have tried, so what about that?

I have to agree with ace on that. Fairly customizable as well.

I have looked into the option and it is on my list I have prepared to present. The only hang ups I have found with it is that is can not be re-indexed to reflect changes immediately and the yearly cost. I have looked into the google mini, free find search engine, site level, atomz, and pico search aswell.

They all carry costs and some offer free trials or 30-day money back guarantees which is great, but with the option of the FP search out there being free (which I think I can discredit based on its findings and difficulty to implement / re-index) I may need to use it ....

IMO the hand coded one is the most efficient and best. Things come up under what you want and how you want. No external interference. It just requires updating ... unfortunately I can not go that route.

why not use a free CMS system that include internal search engine?

for lightweight and easily customized CMS:

sNews CMS

This does mean that you have to revamped the whole site and re-populate the existing content into the new CMS. It's fairly quick to do imho.

Well, if you're willing to do a little set up work with it, you could try Sphinx: http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

It's a free open-source search engine. I have not used it myself, but I have seen it running places, and it seems pretty good - it's probably worth at least a look.

I will look into those options. I am probably more for the sphinxsearch than the cms as it is a 96+ page site that will need to be searched. But the CMS is a good idea if I end up using the FP Search Engine.

I wish I had a budget that came with part of my position haha, then life would be easier