There’s no way to search my website, so I’ve added a new TypePad widget to my blog: Swicki. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include my site in the search….
Swicki is new kind of search engine that allows anyone to create deep, focused searches on topics you care about. Unlike other search engines, you and your community have total control over the results and it uses the wisdom of crowds to improve search results. This search engine, or swicki, can be published on your site. Your swicki presents search results that you’re interested in, pulls in new relevant information as it is indexed, and organizes everything for you in a neat little customizable widget you can put on your web site or blog, complete with its very own buzz cloud that constantly updates to show you what are hot search terms in your community.
The federated search function doesn’t seem to be working correctly, but hopefully I can get it fixed and working. If not, I’ll switch over to Rollyo.
We’re in the final stages of completing an investment into a similar technology for the enterprise, so I’ll post relative to the Swicki search technology once the deal is finalized.
Jason Ball 
If you setup your own swicki, you can have your site indexed immediately [1], but then you lose the advantage of the community search. But for a search on your blog, I would have thought you’d want it restricted to your site, and maybe have a secondary search that goes to the appropriate swicki.
For a blog search, I’d avoid using Rollo (Yahoo), or a restricted Google search [2], because they both rely on the web indicies of those search engines, which are slow to add blog posts. Assuming you have pingbacks set up, an embedded Technorati search [3] would give you real time results. If you have the inclination, the best option would be to persuade Six Apart to implement a traditional database search, which would give the best results because they have access to all your content and metadata in a structured format.
[1] http://blog.eurekster.com/2006/03/instant_indexing_of_your_site.html
[2] http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/news/2003/08/adding_google_s.html
[3] http://www.technorati.com/developers/help/searchlet.html
(I’ve listed the links as the bottom because the preview stripped them out when I used tags)
Miles,
I’ve emailed Eureka to let them know I’m having problems- for some reason my customizations simply aren’t sticking. I’d like to have my site’s content to appear first, and then related content from other (relevant VC) blogs/sites. Which should be feasible with Eureka’s software…
I’m trying to avoid yahoo! altogether- I want simple, focused searches.
I’ll definitely add the Technorati search as well. Thanks for the tip-
Mike – selecting site search does not override community search. All of your feed customization and selection serves as the baseline upon which we layer community reranking. Jason’s understanding is correct:
+ You can choose to search your site by entering the url in the “My Site” text box. Where you have content, your results will appear first.
+ You can also choose a restricted set of blogs/sites by entering the comma-delimited URLs in the “URLs of sites that are most relevant to your swicki” text box. Where they have appropriate content, they will appear beneath your site search results.
+ These setttings are the baseline. As users interact with the page, the results will reorganize accordingly.
Jason, we apologize for the lack of responsiveness with your customization today. We are upgrading our indexing infrastructure today and you won’t see your changes live until tomorrow.
Second round of apologies to Miles – who isn’t ‘Mike’.
Tac,
Software misbehaves. It’s a fact of life- so no problem there… One of your team has already come back to me and is looking into it- that’s the important part.
Thanks again- Jason