Include files displayed in internal search

[mtran]

Hi,

I'm manging a site that uses the same content on different pages. For example, the overview blurb is used on the About Us page on the public site, About Us on the Extranet and Intranet, and even on the Career page... To make it convenient to maintain I used an include file [.asp] for that Overview blurb. Everything works well in terms of site maintenance.

The thing is when people use the Search box on the website, the include file appears as "Untitled" in search results and if people click, they'll see the include file content which is only the overview text, without the site nav, banner, footer.... not good at all

I can make the include files folder unsearchable, but doing so would make the search results shorter and less accurate...

Is there a way to solve above issue in asp? Thanks!

[Beverleyh]

I can make the include files folder unsearchable, but doing so would make the search results shorter and less accurate...Are you absolutely sure that this is the case?

If pointed to the main page link I would expect a search engine to spider the whole page, pulling in any extra included files and interpretting all portions as a whole.
I dont know how your search engine works but surely setting an excluded folder would just make that folder unspiderable from a direct link - content from it that is contained in another page that IS in a searchable location would hopefully include the files in the search.

Which search engine are you using anyhow?

[mtran]

Thanks for the response. The search engine is an .asp script we've been using. The way it works is to search through text including title properties of invidual files including pdfs, docs, xls... and display the files that have relevant/searched keywords.

I tested and pretty sure we missed out lots of results by making the include files folder unsearchable.

[Beverleyh]

I think maybe further tests are in order.

You say that the excluded folder reduces the search result count - that's good. The exclude filter is at least working on whole files.

So now try putting a basic text file containing something totally obscure in the excluded folder, eg "sparkly vampires are so last year" and include it in a main site page that will be spidered and is searchable.

Run a spidering update and then a search on "vampires" - what happens?

If the search results spit out reference to sparkly vampires with your main page as the link, you know everything is working as it should.