Originally, I was going to write a post about the unexpected issues that pop-up in our Web-based days. The primary theme was going to revolve around the semi-humorous issues we recently encountered with our search engine, along with some other web-related issues, and how glad we were that our search issues were resolved. Then we’d all have a hearty chuckle, and get some coffee and banana waffles.
The problem is, the search issue isn’t resolved.
As you may have noticed over the last week and a half, the search on the Buffalo State College site has been less-than-optimum. (The search on the blogs is separate, and isn’t affected by this issue).
What’s happening is that we’ve been beset by a series of hardware failures with our Google Mini(s). The first issue was that the CPU of the Mini was failing, causing it to act erratically. This was replaced with a new unit. The new unit, however, had its own problems, and was replaced with another unit. A replacement for the replacement, as it were.
Each time we swap in a new unit, the search engine needs to recrawl the site. During this time, the search results are hit and miss, as all the pages in the site haven’t been added yet. This is expected and normal. This isn’t the issue. The issue is that the search is not crawling our site correctly, and is currently returning only about 25% of the pages it normally searches.
Oh yes, the results also look incorrect. Even though the settings are exactly the same as they’ve been on the last two Minis we’ve had.
As you can imagine, this is a lot of fun, and keeps me busy. It also keeps me from addressing the redesign as effectively as I’d like. I promise we’ll have more information about this later this week.
So, we appreciate your patience as Buffalo State works to resolve its search engine woes. Once it’s resolved, you’ll know both by a post here, and the loud sound of cheering coming from Cleveland Hall.
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1 | Mark McBride at April 2, 2008 11:53 AM
The new pages are looking good. I was wondering if there were any plans to improve the search feature on the web page. Mac uses "spotlight" http://www.pandia.com/sw-2005/19-spotlight.html
which is a great tool for locating information.
Even before the recent problems, searching for information from the website was mediocre at best. I think the technology has just improved so much and I'm getting spoiled by the search-ability of many of the databases in the library.
Enough outta me,
Mark