We use different search solutions on a variety of our drupal sites. Some use Solr, some use core, some use Lucene, and some use Google search.
Half of me thinks that search should be "in house" and half of me thinks using outside sources like google for searching is the way to go. I know there is really "no one size fits all", and no "the only right way" but I want to pick one side and go with it.
One advantage of using search in house is you have complete control over how the search results look. But it also uses more resources.
I think leveraging google (google_appliance, google_cse) is great because
1.) uses less resources
2.) The power and precision of search results of the #1 search company in the world
3.) seo
But the thing that I don't like is not being able to really customize how the results looks using google. We run a few "industry review" or "comparison" type of sites. Where we take an industry, and do reviews on all of its service providers. So our results get very detailed showing thumbnails/prices/cck fields/computed fields.
Something that I always find myself asking is, "Does how the search results look really matter?" Is it really necessary to to have your search results look "teaser like," or are standard google search results all you need.
I would like to hear what type of opinions other people have; and their thoughts.
Comments
Results!
What's most important for me in search is being able to find exactly what you need and more fast. The results are most important. Which method produces the best results and gives the most pertinent information, as well as leads to where to go more information that one might be looking for, and through lack of foresight or knowledge doesn't know about, but if you can provide exactly the right answer, then whatever design best creates that effect is what is best. Google is clear and simple, but maybe you can do more through other software that produces a better product of your service. I wouldn't only weigh the design, but also the benefit/product at the end.
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I believe that you can pretty much perfect and fine tune all ways (solr, lucene, google, faceted). They can all be used to return the best possible matching results. I really have never had the problem of bad matching search results in our sites.
Another thing that gets me thinking a lot is mixing and matching different ways of finding and searching.
-Straight clicking from the menu to the term page.
-Searching using keywords and phrases.
-Browsing.
-Browsing using filtering and sorting on same level tagging.
Do you think that the results across all of these ways should be presented in the same way? Or is it ok to have, say, your search results taken over by google, but your Browsing/filtering/sorting/terms taken over by Views or solr.
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First I would say: NO, search
First I would say: NO, search results should not always/in every project look the same. Neither should the technology that you use for searching determine how the results are presented. I know, it's not always easy to change the looks/contents, but that might be also a reason to not choose a kind of technology, when it doesn't suit the projects needs
I think, before deciding how your search results should look, one should take in consideration for what purpose the search is used.
* If the purpose is more of "accessing your content in a way that cannot be achieved by a menu system", I think your search results should reflect that approach an be more "teaserlike".
* In a scenario where search is used merely to "access archieved content", may be the more standard way of presenting search results is the way to go.
* it can be thought of many more use cases for searching, so there may also be many more useful ways to present search results.
Also the forseeable usage amount of a search tool would be a factor for me to decide how much effort I would put in enhancing search result presentation.
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