Nathan
CEO/Owner
Computer Hope
http://www.computerhope.com
1) Why did you need Google Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE)?
We were confronting the limitations of an existing in-house solution and needed to upgrade. We had been working on developing a new in-house solution. However, after the first few months of development and the projected time and cost involved to complete the project we found it would be much better solution to use CBSE.
2) What technology, if any, did it replace and why?
We used an in-house search engine written in Perl that indexed all pages and allowed users to search the site using another Perl script that parsed results from the generated index. In addition to this search engine we also utilized the included search on
the forums to search pages posted on it. We needed to replace these search engines as we began encountering CPU overload related issues when we started exceeding 10,000 searches daily and because of the need to search other sections of our site including our forums stored on another MySQL server.
3) What benefits have you derived from using CSBE?
The benefits derived from using Google CSBE are numerous and those that stand out the most are:
- Having one search engine capable of searching all pages of the site and not just sections of it.
- Reduced overall strain on our servers.
- Spelling recommendations.
- Quick results to search queries, even at peek times of the day.
- Daily, monthly and even overall search statistics that are updated frequently.
- Cost effectiveness, especially when compared to other products, services and re-designing a new custom search engine.
- Easy and fast to implement and test.
4) What features of CSBE do you appreciate most and why?
Overall the features I've enjoyed the most have been the ability to
index and search any of our pages that are accessible on the Internet,
spelling recommendations and the ability to refine search results into
specific categories.
5) What's been the overall impact of using Google CSBE on your website?
Shortly after implementing the search across all pages and sections of the site I started to notice an increase in traffic and new users on the forums and a slight decrease in received e-mail pertaining to questions that have been answered on the forums. I attribute these results to the fact that users were now finding answers to their questions from the website that have been addressed on the forums.
6) Do you have any advice you'd give others in implementing the Google
CSBE for their company's use?
I'd highly recommend Google CSBE to any small, medium, or large company
as you're getting access to the best search engine and search features
available on the Internet at a price that’s very affordable.
