Things To Remember Site Server Search is a very powerful and flexible product. It provides all of the indexing and searching features that you need to implement a site search.
I've only come across one area that may cause concern. This relates to the use of cookies, or rather the lack of them. The Site Server Search crawler does not support cookies.
Many sites check to see if a browser has cookies enabled before they allow a user to access their site. If they do not they can redirect them to a page that contains a description of cookies and how their site uses them. As the Search component crawls through a site it will trigger the same response as any normal visitor.
If you use this type of cookie detection it is suggested that you check the browser name by looking at the Request.ServerVariables collection for the HTTP_USER_AGENT item. You can set the value that the User Agent Server Variable returns for the Site Server Search crawler. Under the Search item, within MMC, double click the server name to expand the list. Now right click on the Catalog Build Server item and choose Properties. On the General tab you will see a User Agent field. Here you can specify the exact text that should be reported when a site queries the HTTP_USER_AGENT Server Variable.
It is probably not a good idea to change the start of this string as many sites look for specific values, such as "MSIE" followed by a version number. You could add your company name to the end of the string.
About the Author Jason Hales is president of Digital Tier, a software consultancy specializing in Windows and Internet development using Visual Basic, ASP and other Microsoft technologies. E-Mail: jason.hales@digitaltier.com
