AddSearch supports crawling and indexing several document types. In addition to webpages, AddSearch can crawl and index PDFs as well as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents.

Instructions to set up document types

You can set up document types feature by following these instructions or taking the following steps

  1. Login to your AddSearch account
  2. Navigate to:
    1. Setup
    2. Domains and crawling
    3. Under Document types (PDF, Word, PowerPoint) enable PDF support

Picture of document types user interface.

When the setting is changed, a full re-crawl is required.

  1. Navigate to Index tools
  2. Request a full re-crawl

Picture of full re-crawl user interface.

Please note: each document counts as a separate page in your plan’s page quota. Enabling the “Document types” feature may cause you to exceed your quota.

The size limit of PDFs is 20 MB. If your PDFs exceed the size limit, you can request a custom limitation.

Indexing metadata of documents

In addition to the content, AddSearch indexes the metadata from PDFs and Microsoft Office documents. There are settings we can use to enhance what is indexed as well as what is shown in the search results. Please contact AddSearch Customer Support if you need help in setting up the search.

Filtering search results based on document types

You can filter the search results based on document types with category filters. Below you can see the supported category filters for document types

  • doctype_html
  • doctype_pdf
  • doctype_doc
  • doctype_docx
  • doctype_ppt
  • doctype_pptx
  • doctype_xls
  • doctype_xlsx

The category filter has the following syntax categories=doctype_pdf which you can add to the search script.

The following scripts show how to use the document types as filters in the Search Widget. Replace #### with your site key.

Include search results with PDF as the document type

<script src="https://cdn.addsearch.com/v5/addsearch-ui.min.js?key=####&categories=doctype_pdf"></script>

Include search results with pptx as the document type

<script src="https://cdn.addsearch.com/v5/addsearch-ui.min.js?key=####&categories=doctype_pptx"></script>

You can also create combinations of document types to include in the search results. For instance, the following filter includes search results with PDF, pptx, and doc as the document type

<script src="https://cdn.addsearch.com/v5/addsearch-ui.min.js?key=####&categories=doctype_pdf,doctype_pptx,doctype_doc"></script>

For more information on the category filters read further in the documentation on Search Filters.

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