Frequently Asked Questions

General

Crawling & Indexing

Look & Feel of Ready-Made Views

Does AddSearch Work on My Website?

AddSearch works almost on any CMS. As a cloud-based service, AddSearch does not require integration to your website. We add content from your website for the search and provide the search user interface (UI).

To implement AddSearch Widget to your CMS add the following script to your website’s template (replace #### with your public site key.)

<script src="https://addsearch.com/js/?key=####"></script>

AddSearch also provides a plugin to WordPress for easy installation.

For more information visit our documentation on installing AddSearch to your website using the AddSearch script or the WordPress plugin.

How Can I Change the Look & Feel of AddSearch?

You can customize the style of the search using CSS. Some of the most used styles used with our search are:

  • font-family, font-size and font-color
  • border, border-radius
  • background-color
  • padding, margin

You can modify the styles of the search Widget search results in Look & Feel under Look and Feel in your AddSearch Dashboard. You can also add the styles to your website’s template. Please note that the search input field inherits the styles from your website.

The styling for the placeholder text can be changed with the following CSS snippet:

input[type="text"]::placeholder { color: white !important; }

How Can I Change the Missing Thumbnail Image?

Picture of AddSearch placeholder picture.

When AddSearch hasn’t found an image to use as the thumbnail it uses a placeholder image. You can replace the placeholder image with your own image using the following CSS.

[data-addsearch-image="no-image"] {
background-image: url("https://www.yourdomain.com/yourimage.png") !important;
}

Add the CSS to Search results under Look & Feel in your Dashboard. The CSS can also be added to your webpage template.

For more information visit our documentation on defining your own placeholder image.

Is AddSearch Compliant with WCAG 2.0 AA and Section 508?

AddSearch is developed together with public agencies and is compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0 AA) and GSA Section 508 IT-accessibility program.

For more information visit our documentation on accessibility compliance.

How Can I Choose What to Show in the Search Results?

You can use search filters to choose what to include in the search or what to exclude from the search. Search filters are based on categories that AddSearch collects automatically from your site.

For example, the URL https://www.addsearch.com/support/category-filters/ contains the following category properties

Category filter is a parameter appended to the AddSearch script. It consists of &categories= and the category property. To show search results from https://www.addsearch.com/support/ -path the category filter is &categories=1xsupport. Appended to the search script the filter looks like this:

<script src="https://addsearch.com/js/?key=####&categories=1xsupport"></script>

Replace #### with your AddSearch public site key.

Please note that https://www.addsearch.com and https://addsearch.com have their own category properties: 0xwww.addsearch.com and 0xaddsearch.com.

For more information please visit our documentation on Search filters.

Does AddSearch Add the Contents of PDFs For Search or Just the URL of the PDF?

AddSearch crawls and indexes the contents of PDFs. AddSearch also crawls and indexes metadata from the PDF if it is available.

The size limit for PDFs is 20 MB. Please contact our support to have the bigger PDFs added to your search index.

How Can I Exclude Web Pages From Search?

You can exclude areas of your website from the search index with Site areas tools. Site areas tool is located under Manage results in your Dashboard.

To exclude /support/ and everything within the path from https://www.addsearch.com/support/category-filters/

  1. Go to Site areas under Settings
  2. Click Add new url +
  3. Add /category-filters/ to the input field
  4. Choose Excluded from the drop-down menu on the right side of the input field
  5. Click Save to submit changes

Exclusions require a full re-crawl which you can start from Index tools in your Dashboard.

For more information please visit our documentation on exclusions, Site areas and Full re-crawl.

What Is the Difference Between Additional Domains and AddSearch Accounts?

Each AddSearch account has a search index with settings and analytics. An AddSearch account requires a subscription plan.

You can add additional domains to an AddSearch account. All the Additional domains share the search index, settings, and analytics. By default, AddSearch returns search results from all the Additional domains.

You can create a separate AddSearch account if you need individual indices with their own settings and analytics. Creating separate accounts may be beneficial if you have clients who need their own settings and analytics. Please note that each account requires a subscription plan.

If you do not need separate indices with separate settings and analytics, you can add domains to an account as Additional domains. You can separate search results with search filters if needed.

For more information please visit our documentation on Site areas and Full re-crawl.

How Can I Add Multiple Domains to Search?

You can add domains to your account as Additional domains.

The Additional domains share the same search index and search queries return results from all Additional domains. AddSearch can filter search results from domains, subdomains, and paths.

Multiple domain support is useful when you have content on many websites and want to provide your users with a single access point to the content from all domains.

For more information please visit our documentation on Additional domains.

How Can I Create a New AddSearch Account?

You can create the new account at the top-right corner of the screen at your Dashboard.

Creating an account this way starts a free trial. The trial does not cost you anything until you subscribe to one of our plans.

If you already have an AddSearch account, the new AddSearch accounts link to your existing account. All the new accounts have their own indices with settings and analytics.

For more information please visit our documentation on Adding a new account.

How Can I Index Content Behind a Login?

Contact our support for setting up crawling and indexing content behind a login. To keep the business critical information safe AddSearch has methods to secure access to authorized content.

How Often Does AddSearch Add Content From Webpages to Search?

AddSearch’s algorithms adapt to the frequency of your content updates. When you start using AddSearch it may take a while before the new and updated content is added to the search. When AddSearch learns the frequency of your content updates the content will be added more frequently.

For more information please visit our documentation on Crawling frequency.

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