Search FAQ
You can search VCU's web using two different tools: the VCU’s Web Search (based on ht:/Dig) or Google’s index of the VCU Web. Some kinds of searches, such as those for the home pages of organizations, may yield more relevant results using Google. Other searches such as password protected web sites may benefit from VCU’s Web Search. Note that the Google index is maintained by Google on its own site; we cannot guarantee its comprehensiveness or update frequency. Likewise, should VCU’s Internet connection or the Google site itself be unavailable for any reason, you will not be able to use Google to search the VCU Web. For additional information, please view the FAQ’s below.
- Google's SiteSearch doesn't appear to have indexed all of the pages on my site. Why?
- How does Google's University SiteSearch work
- How often is the search engine updated?
- Will Google's SiteSearch work on our intranet?
- Which servers are indexed by ht:/Dig?
- How does ht:/Dig index the VCU Web Site?
- How is the relevance rating calculated?
- How can I improve my relevance rating?
- How do I add the VCU ht:/Dig Search to my web site?
- How do I add the VCU Google SiteSearch to my web site?
- How do I add the VCU People Search to my web site?
- How do I keep my page from being indexed?
1. Google's SiteSearch doesn't appear to have indexed all of the pages on my site. Why? [top]
If a page is not appearing in the results of your University SiteSearch there could be a number of reasons. First, it could be that Google has not yet crawled that page. Google refreshes its index frequently (approximately every 30 days), however it may not have reached that page. Second, the page may have frames, flash pages or store information in a database. This makes it difficult or impossible for the Google crawler to visit and index the information on that page. Also if the page was protected by robot.txt or required authentication, then Google could not access the page.
2. How does Google's University SiteSearch work? [top]
Google's University SiteSearch restricts Google's large one billion and growing web page index to just the domain you specified. Google then searches for your query term over those restricted pages. Because Google indexes its main site once a month, and the University SiteSearch is a subset of the main crawl, the university pages will be updated once a month. Any pages that are accessible on Google.com will be accessible for Google's University SiteSearch.
3. How often is the search engine updated? [top]
Google will refresh its entire index approximately every 30 days. The ht:/Dig search engine is reindexed twice a week.
4. Will Google's SiteSearch work on our intranet? [top]
No, Google's SiteSearch service only crawls and indexes publicly available pages on the Internet
5. Which servers are indexed by ht:/Dig? [top]
Five web servers are indexed:
http://www.vcu.edu
http://views.vcu.edu
http://www.math.vcu.edu
http://www.library.vcu.edu
http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu
This includes all of the virtual web servers running on www.vcu.edu. You must submit an Email request to the VCU Webmaster to have your server added to the VCU index.
6. How does HtDig index the VCU Web Site? [top]
HtDig indexes the VCU Web Site through a process known as digging. Digging is the first step in creating a search database. This system uses the word digging while other systems call it harvesting or gathering. In the ht://Dig system, the program HtDig performs the information gathering stage. In this process, the program will act as a regular web user, except that it will follow all hyperlinks that it comes across. (Actually, it will not follow all of them, just those that are within the domain it needs to gather information on...) Each document it goes to is examined and all the unique words in this document are extracted and stored. This digging process creates two files. The first one is the list of all the words and the second one is a database of URLs and information about the URLs.
7. How is the ht:/Dig relevance rating calculated? [top]
The relevance rating of a page is determined by the frequency with which the keywords occur. Additionally, the keywords are weighted according to their location in the document. Keywords located in the <head> of a document, i.e. the Title or in a <meta> tag are more heavily weighted that keywords located in the body of the document. Also, Keywords receive a higher rating the closer they are to the beginning of the document.
8. How can I improve my relevance rating? [top]
There are two primary ways of improving your relevance rating. The first is to appropriately identify your web page with a proper <title>. The second is to use a <meta> tag to describe your web page's keywords.
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1,keyword2,...">
The meta tag goes in the <head> of your HTML document. FrontPage users should look at the online document for adding keywords using FrontPage.