Help with PicoSearch

Quick-search the Frequently Asked Questions

FAQs on search hosting
•  Why do I need my own Search Engine?
•  What is the difference between PicoSearch and traditional Search Engines?
•  What is "Search Hosting"?
•  How is Search Hosting with PicoSearch better than installing hardware or software?
•  Is PicoSearch guaranteed? How can I try it out?
•  What are the Free Account search results sponsor links?
•  How BIG a site can I index?
•  How OFTEN is my index updated?
•  Will PicoSearch work with CGI and ASP? What about ASP.Net?
•  Can I search my password protected directories?
•  How can I ensure that members only use my search engine?
•  Will PicoSearch work in a shopping cart system? (adding runtime url data)
•  Can PicoSearch search my database?
•  Can PicoSearch search my secure server (SSL)?
•  Can PicoSearch search PDFs, MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more?
•  Can PicoSearch do XML? (for search or webservice datafeed)
•  Can PicoSearch provide results in datafeed formats? (XML, JSON, etc.)
•  What's New at PicoSearch?
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FAQs on PicoSearch Professional and Premium vs. PicoSearch free
•  What are the advantages of the Professional and Premium Plans over the Free Plan?
•  Do paying accounts get advanced statistics reporting? (reports, metrics, analytics)
•  Can paid accounts do hit highlighting?
•  Is it easy to upgrade to a Professional or Premium Plan whenever I want?
•  Are bulk discounts available, as for resellers?
•  How can I hide all references to PicoSearch using my purchased plan?
•  How flexible is my purchased Plan's template?
•  What if I get dead links in my search results template?
•  How can I use additional files in my search results template? (htc files, server side includes)
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FAQs on PicoSearch setup
•  How do I subscribe to PicoSearch?
•  How can I set my logo in a Free Plan?
•  How do I install PicoSearch on my website?
•  How do I align and center the search tools on my web pages?
•  Can I create a single search engine for multiple web sites?
•  How can I restrict the scope of my index?
•  What will PicoSearch do with my images and other non-text files?
•  How long will PicoSearch indexing take?
•  What can I do to slow the crawler if my server complains?
•  Do I have to wait for the PicoSearch indexer to finish?
•  What can I do about Framesets and Frames!?
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FAQs on search indexing and building the search engine
•  How do I update the indexing to include the changes from my website?
•  Can PicoSearch index and search files besides HTML? (PDF, DOC, ASP, etc.)
•  What happens when I hit the maximum pages in my account?
•  How can I combine sites in my search engine to get a mini web portal effect?
•  Will PicoSearch index and search my document titles, meta tags, image alts, and file names?
•  How can I control the international language character set used at indexing time?
•  How can I control the skipping of text or links in my search? (Excluded Paths, more)
•  How can I control the adding of text or links to my search? (Help for not found pages)
•  Can I split pages at anchor tags and jump to anchor sections?
•  What kinds of automatic data extraction can I do with page definitions to enrich the search results?
•  Why didn't PicoSearch find all of my documents?
•  What does Link out of Bounds mean?
•  Does PicoSearch honor the robot exclusion protocol?
•  Can PicoSearch report on my website's bad or broken links?
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FAQs on PicoSearching & search results pages
•  What are my options for displaying the Title, Meta and other parts of each search result?
•  What is "results in context" (also known as concordance), and what are its advantages?
•  How do I set the file date for date display and sorting?
•  What is the syntax of a query?
•  How can I initialize the search when it starts up? (ANY/ALL and other defaults)
•  How can I influence the outcome of a search (ranking overview) ?
•  How can I keep certain URLs on top in the Search Results (using promote and demote)?
•  How can I use Direct Searches to send certain searches directly to certain pages?
•  What if I want to rotate the top results?
•  Can I set stopwords to ignore common words or handle questions in whole sentences?
•  Can I set less important words to affect the weighting and order of search results?
•  Can I adjust the query for effects specific to the words on my site?
•  How much can I customize the results pages?
•  How can I pop up the search into a new window?
•  How can I redirect or adjust my URLs in the search results?
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FAQs on additional search designs
•  What is the AutoComplete feature of PicoSearch?
•  Can PicoSearch do hit highlighting?
•  How can I get the cursor to appear automatically (set focus) in my search box?
•  How do I add a reset (clear) button to my search form?
•  Can I put a linked picture, product photo or page icon next to a search result?
•  Can I display results in columns (tables) or customize my product photo layout?
•  Can I search for my own fields and use multiple inputs with drop-down boxes like a database query?
•  Can I divide my search engine into several different sections (partitions)?
•  How can I use more than one display language?
•  If I'm using frames, how can I put the search box in one frame and have the results appear in another frame?
•  How can I stop another site from hijacking my search engine within their frames?
•  How can I use a Professional or Premium Plan's template to customize the search box and buttons?
•  What template codes can I use to further customize my Professional search results?
•  Can I feed the current search to my own ad banner system to get keyword sensitivity?
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FAQs on administrative issues
•  I lost my password and/or my account identification! What can I do?
•  What is the PicoSearch policy on my privacy?
•  Are there restrictions on the kinds of websites I can index?
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Still have questions?
If you have a question that we didn't cover well, please tell us so that we can answer it for you and anyone else who might be wondering too!
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