Project Description:

Enhance the current version of the Google Search Module [Download Here], currently in use here: www.instrumentationews.com. This module provide an interface with the Google Search API and produce search results directly inside the site, with pagination (using pager.inc). These enhancements will create a more customizable module, that will include related search and related terms in the result pages, an AJAX search interface (live suggestion), so the module will be returning possible search terms while the user is typing keywords in the search box, a block with most popular search terms, and an administrative RSS feed with recent search queries.

Motivation:

Drupal currently has excellent built-in search capabilities, and it is a very important issue for intranet sites, but in some cases, like very large sites (such as news sites) the search database could outgrow the limits of some hosting plans. Using Google Search API could eliminate the need of having the local search tables, and in addition brings the advantage of using a powerful, search engine, with some add-ons that could improve the users search experience.

Success criteria

A full working module with a strong configuration section:

  • Live suggestion (AJAX) could be Enabled/Disabled
  • Related search terms and synonyms could be Enabled/Disabled
  • Number of search results per page, total number of pages
  • Site search or Web Search

Roadmap:

  1. Install latest version of Drupal (4.7RCX).
  2. Upgrade current Google Search module to 4.7RCX
  3. Incorporating Suggest Framework: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=145701 to the Google Search module
  4. Caching Suggest results using Drupal caching mechanism
  5. Creating an administrative RSS feed with live search terms
  6. Log, and statistics analysis of Search Terms using Drupal statistic module.
  7. Creating a block for most popular search terms

Comments on this proposal

This is highly interesting
kamika - May 5, 2006 - 11:45

Is it already clear who is mentoring this project.
For a little chat and some advice?

I had a class in online marketing and search engine optimization and got in touch with Adsense and Adwords already.

I see many sites having the google ad's so a module for easy placement would be nice.

Also the whole field of taking the load off the server to the google cache is a nice idea.
For example in combination with Adsense for search results which would bring some income to the site.

greetings, kamika
http://www.kamika.net (german language)