About the University at Albany Search

Introduction to ht://Dig at the University at Albany

The ht://Dig WWW Search Engine Software enables the University at Albany to offer our web visitors free, powerful search options which span the entire University at Albany domain (albany.edu).

Advantages

• Web page content is now indexed on a weekly basis.
• PDF files with valid text content under 2megs are now indexed.
• Web authors may add search capability to their pages and limit the returned results to their own site using simple HTML forms.
• Web Builders may add special META tags to their web pages for additional functionality.
• Visitors may control the type of search performed without understanding complex search syntax. For example: Selecting method "All" and searching for fun activities will return all documents which contain both fun and activities. Additionally, more complex expressions can be used by selecting the Boolean method. Phrase searching will be implemented in a future release.
• Respects robots exclusion through use of robots.txt file or robots META tag within HTML documents.

Requesting the addition of your server to our indexing run

Please check the currently indexed web servers list before submitting your request.

If you maintain an official web server within the University at Albany domain and you wish to request the addition of your web server to our indexing run please send e-mail to: webmaster@albany.edu with the subject "Add site to htdig." We will then need the home page where you wish indexing to start from. For example: http://www.atmos.albany.edu/

Please note that pages cannot be indexed unless a link leads to the page from the start page. In these cases you may need to give us more than one start page.

Help Topics

Adding a local search form to your web site

The search which appears on the search results page is determined by the search selected on the initial search page.

For example, if you chose to search the entire University, the search form presented on the results page will be set to search the entire University again.

By default, your previous search words are saved for performing refined searches within the same set of matches found. This allows you to search for a broad topic. Then search within this broad topic for something more specific.

Selecting "New Search" and entering search words allows you to disregard your previous search words.

To target a different section of the University at Albany's web pages return to the search page and use the desired form and options.