Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Seasons of Google

Google's 13th Birthday

Just for the heck of it, I've decided to start taking screenshots of each and every change in Google's homepage that I come across...to capture its 'Seasons'.

I'm pretty sure you all know how much of an effort they put in to decorate the 'Google' ever so often. Thus I feel that its kind of a waste if they aren't documented.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Problem with the Search box

Tried doing a search using the search box on All You Need to Know About Games this morning and realised that it doesn't work properly. The search query returns no results although I am sure that the word searched can be found within my blog articles. Once again, a new problem arises....hahaha.

Anyway, I did a search on google and found that this problem first started in 2009 and then somehow until now, it still isn't really fixed. This problem has something to do with the "Search Function" via the navigation bar.

What my search box does is append a "/search?q=keywords" into the navigation bar and hit 'submit'.
Example:
Restricted Instance
Legendary
And the results if found is returned to the searcher.

As you can see in the examples, the search function returned a "No posts matching the query: restricted instance." result in the first example, while it worked with the second example.

Although I liked how the search result is returned within my blog and adhering to the format, clearly its not doing a good job on searching.

My temporary solution to it now is these 2 custom search boxes, the google custom search engine and the search box widget.

I first found out about this "Google Custom Search Engine" via A Custom Search Engine for Blogger. Using the information in the article, I modified my old search box code with the customised one from Google. It now lies right where my old search box was, using the same design and format.

In my opinion, it does a pretty decent job in searching, although some rubbish does turn up owing to the "Labels" column in my blog and thus might mess up the user's search for articles. In addition, I dislike the way that it turns the user over to another page with a different design and then turn them back here to my blog via the search results. Perhaps much more playing around with the Google Custom Search Engine might be in order.

Due to the above-mentioned flaw, I have added the Search box widget at the right hand column of my blog. This widget does a nifty job of returning search results within my blog (to my liking), however the format it presents itself in is a mis-match to my blog's format. I have yet found a way to customise its appearance. What's worse is that it does a poor search job for articles within my site. Although I kind of like the added function of searching for articles within the sites that I've linked to or added to my list.

Therefore, these two search boxes will be here to stay until I can find a better solution to this search box problem.

From,
- BuLaDiFu -