ARCHIVED: About IU Search

IU Search is for people who need to search through the many websites offered by Indiana University. Search is powered by the Google Custom Search (GCS), which provides IU website owners the ability to manage search for their web collections.

The Google Custom Search provides the following for website administrators:

• Control over the returned results, returning search results from a single website or a customized collection of websites
• Control over the crawling schedule:
  • The GCS crawls the IU web continuously.
  • The Google commercial service updates the university index approximately monthly.
• In-house management of Promotions (equivalent to the commercial service's "sponsored links"), search term synonyms, and subcollections
• The ability to crawl and index pages unavailable to outside search engines, such as those restricted due to FERPA or HIPAA regulations

Users should experience:

• Better and quicker search results
• Advanced search features, including searching for PDF, .doc, and .ppt files
• Powerful search administration
• Integration into websites

The switch to the GCS did not change the way other search engines index the IU site. When the IU site is modified, the GCS re-crawls and updates the search index in accordance with Google's standard algorithm for web searches.

This free custom search service allows website administrators and builders to customize search engine appearance and behavior. For more, see About Google Custom Search.

If you have questions about IU's Google Custom Search, email Enterprise Web Tech Services.