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Title Using the Site Server Search facility to search custom Meta Tags
Description The Site Server Search allows indexing and retrieval of custom Meta Tags. This can be used to enable users of a web site to restrict searches to a particular part of the website.
Keywords tutorial, example, vbscript, asp, active server page, siteserver, site server, search, metadata, meta data, meta tags, custom
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Using the Site Server Search facility to search custom Meta Tags An interesting feature of the Site Server 3.0 Search facility is the ability to search custom Meta Tags. A common use of this facility is to enable users of a web site to narrow down their searches to a particular part of a website.

Restricting searches In a well organised site, you could restrict searches by only allowing searches of specific file paths. For example, the following will restrict searches to the financial section of the www.foo.com website:

Util.AddScopeToQuery Q, http://www.foo.com/financial/ , deep

However, if your content is distributed in many different folders (or even on different servers) then a file path restriction is not appropriate.

A possible alternative is to tag certain pages with specific Meta Tags. The Tag Tool that is supplied with Site Server allows this to be done for entire websites at a time. Obviously, if you use Perl or some other type of scripting to generate static web pages from databases then adding Meta Tags is very straightforward.

Searching custom Meta Tags The first stage is to add the custom Meta Tags to your web page. So if you want to tag the Customer Support and Financial Services pages respectively, add the following HTML to each:

META NAME= Department CONTENT= Customer Support

META NAME= Department CONTENT= Financial Services

Having done this, you will have to rebuild the Search Catalog for that website.

The ASP code that will create a basic search results page that will allow searching of these pages is below. Be sure to change the value of the Q.Catalog to the name of your Search Catalog!

%
set Util = Server.CreateObject( MSSearch.Util )
set Q = Server.CreateObject( MSSearch.Query )

Q.Catalog = catalog_name
Q.SortBy = rank[d]
Q.MaxRecords = 300
Q.Columns = DocTitle, DocAddress, size, write, rank
Q.Query = @Meta_Department Financial Services

Set RS = Q.CreateRecordSet( sequential )

Do while not RS.EOF
Response.Write A HREF= Chr(34) RS( DocAddress ) Chr(34) RS( DocTitle ) /A BR
RS.MoveNext
Loop

Set Util = nothing
Set Q = nothing
%

Note that the search query specifies that the Department Meta Tag should be searched for instances of Financial Services . If you want to restrict searching to the Customer Support pages instead of the Financial Services pages, then modify the code appropriately:

Q.Query = @Meta_Department Customer Support

You could also search other custom Meta Tags in a similar way by adding the Meta_ prefix to them. So if an online store wanted to search the ProductArea Meta Tag, then you could use a Query such as:

Q.Query = @Meta_ProductArea Toys

Retrieving contents of Meta Tags If you want to retrieve the contents of Meta Tags and display them with the search results, then you need to use the following procedure, otherwise you may see an error similar to this:

ADODB.Fields error '800a0cc1'
ADO could not find the object in the collection corresponding to the name or ordinal reference requested by the application.
/finance/search/default.asp, line 164

First, add Meta_Department to the Q.Columns line of the ASP code:

Q.Columns = DocTitle, DocAddress, size, write, rank, Meta_Department

Once you have done this, in the Site Server Administrator Microsoft Management Console (MMC), go to Console Root Search your_machine_name Catalog Build Server your_catalog_name Schema . In the Catalog Schema part of the MMC, click on the Add button. When the Add Schema Column part of the MMC appears, add the following: Property name = Meta_Department Property set = click on Standard property set, and change drop-down list to HTML Meta Property ID = department Type = change the drop-down list to String Index = Yes Retrieve = Yes When you have clicked on the Submit button, you are given the choice of changing the Master Schema (this changes all the Catalogs on that Search server) or creating a Custom Schema (this only changes the current Catalog). Having changed the Schema, you will then have to rebuild the Search Catalog.

If you subsequently modify the ASP code to the following, each search result will then display the contents of the Department Meta Tag:

Response.Write A HREF= Chr(34) RS( DocAddress ) Chr(34) RS( DocTitle ) /A ( RS( Meta_Department ) ) BR

Further reading This is a brief introduction to the use of custom Meta Tags with Site Server. On well managed sites the use of such searches could make it a lot easier for your web site users to quickly find the content they are looking for. The Site Server Software Developer s Kit is useful (the kit is also on the Site Server 3.0 CD-ROM). Using ASP to view Site Server Search catalog properties . You might also like to invest in one of these featured books:

Useful Development Tools ASP Documentation Tool Automatically creates developer documentation for ASP 2.0 and 3.0 web applications written in VBScript and JScript. Documentation for Microsoft Access, SQL Server 7/2000 databases and Visual Basic 6.0 components associated with the web application can also be incorporated into the reports. Documentation is created in HTML, HTML Help and plain text formats. View Sample Output (HTML Help format).
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SQL Documentation Tool The SQL Documentation Tool creates technical documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and 2000 databases. Technical documentation is created in HTML and HTML Help formats. The HTML Help format documentation is fully searchable and cross referenced. The SQL Documentation Tool documents SQL Server Tables, Views, Stored Procedures, Triggers and Table Relationships. View Sample Output (HTML Help format).
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Index Server Companion The Index Server Companion is a Windows application that extends the functionality of Microsoft Index Server so that it is able to index content from remote websites and also from ODBC databases. As such it can be used as a low cost alternative to Site Server 3.0 Search. View Product Documentation (119K ZIP file).
Try Sample Search Facility .
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The Website Utility The Website Utility examines websites for errors and areas that need to be optimised for search engines by using a built in web crawling engine. Errors checked for include broken or moved hyperlinks, missing page titles and missing meta tags. It also generates HTML for use in creating website site maps (table of contents pages - like this one ), and is able to create both client-side JavaScript Search Engines and server-side ASP Search Engines for a website. View Sample Output (HTML Help format).
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