UNC-CH Information Technology Services

Google search added to University’s Web site

Searches on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s  Web site (www.unc.edu) are now performed using Google, considered by many to be the industry standard for searching Web content.

The Google Search Appliance (GSA) was added to the university’s site on Jan. 30 by Information Technology Services. The GSA offers several enhancements, including better search results based on relevancy and priority as well as a new interface. While www.google.com already indexes most of UNC–Chapel Hill’s Web pages, the GSA resides on the university’s network and can be customized to find documents that would not be found by the regular version of Google.

As part of the implementation that started in November, the ITS web systems team has already begun customizing the search system based on success rates for searches. To help improve search results, users are encouraged to use the link on the search page to contact the system administrator to provide feedback. The search page also has links to advanced searches and a section on search tips. The systems team expects about 10,000 search hits per day.

Departments with customized search forms will still be able to access the old search engine until they transition their pages to use the new one. The old search engine will continue to update its collection for a few months.

Google search is now available by clicking the search link found on the UNC-Chapel Hill home page, http://www.unc.edu, or by going directly to the search page at http://search.unc.edu.