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Search Central is a collection of all resources related to the EPA search engine as well as some outside search resources you might find useful.
What's New?
July 22, 2008. Ajax-based autocomplete available for testing and comments.
Ajax autocomplete
The autocomplete (a.k.a. augosuggest) feature displays a dropdown of suggested queries as you type. This implementation uses the script.aculo.us helpers. For starters, we're using a .4 second delay and a 2 character minimum. So far, we think we need to 1. pare down our suggestions a little 2. add a slider to the dropdown and 3. autorun the query when you click a suggestion. What do you think?
June 6,2008. New User Interface for search implemented
June 30,2008. Try out the EPA Search browser add-on
Search page with browser addon
Follow the instructions on this page to add EPA Search to your browser search tools.
June 6,2008. New User Interface for search implemented
Advanced search
The new look for search results went into production Friday, June 6. Run a search from anywhere to to see the new look for search results.
May 6,2008. Release 3.1.008 implementation follow-up, UI redesign implementation
Final testing of the new UI happens here
The new release of Northern Light, version 3.1.008, was implemented overnight April 30, 2008, and is now in production. We are now performing final testing of the long-awaited redesigned user interface. Please use the URL above for all user testing.
Highlights of the new user interface include:
- Expandable left sidebar in results now includes folders (for better visibility), mini-advanced search, Google and FirstGov search, and helpful links.
- Agency-wide search now excludes PDF files by default. The user can easily choose to include PDF
- Multi-collection support, so we can index key areas more frequently
- Spellchecker enhanced so it will not suggest words for which we have no results, but will accept these words if valid.
- Upgraded filtering of extended character-set to reduce undisplayable characters in title and description
April 24,2008. Migration to new Northern Light release scheduled for Monday, April 28
EPA release notes for NLESE v3.1.008
This release should make ranking for common queries better, a lot better for queries of more than one word. More changes are in store soon, when we release the new version of the user interface. See the release notes for more details on this release.
March 31,2008. Please help us to test Northern Light release 3.1.
Test the new Northern Light release
We think the ranking works better with version than the version in productionxs, so we want to move this into production, independently of implementing the new UI. Specifically, we think ranking of common multi-word queries work a lot better. What do you think?
February 26,2008. The current version of the redesigned search results.
New search results
This includes the new sidebar with extended search features. Note that the default for EPA search is now "web pages" only, which means HTML. The default for Area search will continue to be all documents.
This is the development server for search, which is running version 3.1.008 of Northern Light
February 26,2008. Presentations from Web Work Group Training Conference, Winter 2008.
Why is EPA Search So Hard? (MS PowerPoint, 399K) Stay tuned for our sequel, Search Hard with a Vengeance.
State of Search (MS PowerPoint, 614K)
November 6,2007. New search features all on one page.
New search features page
Auto-suggest, spellchecker and redesigned results.
November 6,2007. Upgraded spell-checker.
Spell-check search
Updated dictionary, with place names, and local terminology. Doesn't blow up on Chatham County towns, either - nice!
September 24,2007. New version of query log reports rolled out.
Public access Agency-wide query logs
Public access query logs by TSSMS
Intranet Agency-wide query logs
Intranet query logs by TSSMS
Use these reports to see what people are searching for on your site. You can view the top queries overall for each month for your area, or for the entire EPA. You can also view the top queries that returned no results (useful for spotting alternative language, or common misspellings). If you have any questions, contact Peter Buch.
New tool for managing web aliases rolled out.
http://www.epa.gov/cgi-bin/SPA/selectalias
The new tool to view web aliases for your area, and detect and resolve conflicts is now available. This is more exciting than it sounds. Please send your comments to Karen Litwin.
Followup from WWG Training Conference August 20-23, 2007
http://intranet.epa.gov/webgroup/taxonomy/Metadata.htm
Susan Fagan presented on newly released search folders and the taxonomy project. Visit the link above for more about the EPA Web Taxonomy that is the basis for folders.
Try out the new search autosuggest feature
http://nlquery.epa.gov/epasearch/searchutils/autosuggest.html
Type two or more letters into the search box on this sample page, and see a list of suggested queries.
Participate in the search folders test!
http://nlquery.epa.gov/epasearch/searchutils/folders.html
Help us improve the folders search feature by testing the search and providing us with feedback on helpful the folders were in locating the most search results most relevant to your needs.
EPA Resources
Test pages
http://nlquery.epa.gov/webmast/testpages.html
Do you want to customize the search for your area? Maybe want to add more power to the search but would like to know what the results will look like or how to code it? Here's a listing of all the different features you can use and ways to program your search form on your area.
Utilities
http://nlquery.epa.gov/webmast/utils.html
Would you like to know what users searched for the most on the EPA Web site? Would you like to know this for your area? How about the number of search queries entered into the EPA search engine in a day or month? Would you like to know how fast the search engine returns results? Take a look at all these spiffy utilities to help you and the Search Engine Webmasters gauge search performance.
Search Help on the Web Guide
http://yosemite.epa.gov/OEI/webguide.nsf/searchengine
Need to implement a search form? Would you like some step-by-step instructions on how to do this? Visit the Web Guide for detailed instructions on how to implement search on your area.
Search Conversion
For the Intranet: http://intranet.epa.gov/webmast3/nlconversion/
For Public Access: http://www.epa.gov/webmast1/nlconversion/
Have you converted your search form from Verity to Northern Light? If you're not sure, visit these pages to find out how many of your pages are converted and how many aren't. This tool will also identify the URLs of these pages so you can find them quickly should you need to edit your search form code.
Resources Outside of the EPA
Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/ 
Do you need to know more about how search engines work? Want the latest news on how people use search effectively? Need tips and hints on crafting search to suit your needs? Just want to be search-geek and know all there is know about search? This site has news, tips, discussion forums, expert advice, and basic search introductory content to help you with a variety of needs.
Sitemaps.org
http://sitemaps.org/
Would you like to understand XML sitemaps better? Need help implementing one? This site covers the basics of developing XML sitemaps.