Implemented Google Search

This week I finally had the time to change the Search page of my web site. Up until this week, searches were performed with a custom search solution, that understood a simple form of boolean logic. However, that solution certainly had its limitations.

Improving Search

The biggest problem with my custom solution was that it only searched database content. However, I also have a number of static pages (like the entire About section) that couldn't be searched with it.

I learned about the Google Search API a long time ago and I knew it would be useful because my site is indexed by Google pretty well. However, I just never got to implementing it on my site. Until this week.

Turns out it's dead easy. You register with Google to get a license key (that allows you to query their system a 1,000 times a day), generate a C# class for a Web Service from a WSDL document, and then fire queries at this web service with the same syntax as you can use in www.Google.com itself. Binding the results to an ASP.NET control like a Repeater or DataList is easy as well.

If you want to use Google Search on your own web site, then check out this article from 4guysfromrolla.com. It describes the entire procedure so you can use the Google API yourself in no time.

Have fun searching!!


Where to Next?

Wonder where to go next? You can read existing comments below or you can post a comment yourself on this article.


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On Thursday, February 01, 2007 11:48:17 AM Nick Nelson said:
windows Intemnet Explorer
Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerParserErrorException: The message
received from the server could not be parsed. common causes for this
error are when the response is mochfied by calls to Response.writeO,
response filters, HttpModules, or server trace is enabled.
Details: Error parsing near
br/
/div
html
head

Am about to try Google but got the above message when attempting to vote. I removed the tag markers so hopefully this'll post OK.
On Thursday, February 01, 2007 11:51:19 AM Imar Spaanjaars said:
Hi Nick,

Yeah, I saw the errors coming in. Sorry about that.

Not sure what's causing it yet; looks like it has to do with the Microsoft Ajax Framework I am using on my site.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'll try to look at it ASAP.

Cheers,

Imar

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Full URLhttp://imar.spaanjaars.com/408/implemented-google-search
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Written byImar Spaanjaars
Date Posted12/06/2006 08:55
Listened to when writing Decades by Joy Division (Track 15 from the album: Heart And Soul (CD 2))