Adding/Updating Your Site

How to: check when your site is scheduled for automatic re-indexing | perform an unscheduled re-indexing of your site | adding a URL to the index | to view a snap-shot of UT web-space




How to check when your site is scheduled for automatic re-indexing


The search engine spider is smart: how frequently it re-indexes your site depends on how frequently you change it. To find out when your site is due to be re-indexed, just go to http://search.tennessee.edu/help/urlstatus.html and type your URL in the query box. Upon submission, you will be returned info on:



How to perform an unscheduled re-indexing of your site


There are occassions, however, when you make some critical changes to your pages and you'd like to have your site re-indexed as soon as possible. To make such a request, go to http://search.tennessee.edu/help/revisitsite.html. Here, you'll be asked which collection your site belongs to and your site's name. Additionally, you'll be given 3 options:
  • immediate, preemptive re-indexing of only those pages exhibiting changes
  • immediate, preemptive re-indexing of all pages in your site regardless of whether they have suffered any changes
  • non-preemptive re-indexing of all pages in your site
The second or third choices seem most reasonable under normal circumstances. Be forewarned that if your pages reside on a particularly large site re-indexing may take a considerable amount of time.

Also note that if you eliminate some pages from your site and fail to re-index it, those defunct pages will remain in the index and may be referred to by the search engine in response to user queries. Re-indexing assures invalid pages are no longer indexed.



Adding a URL to the index


To add a URL to UT's index, go to http://search.tennessee.edu/help/addurl.html. Simply type in your URL and it will be queued immediately for indexing. Note that this service isn't preemptive and may take some time to complete. Also, note that if the URL isn't part of UT web-space, the software will refuse to index it. Finally, be aware that you can only add URL's, not delete them. So to delete a page from the search engine because you have removed documents from your site use 'Add URL' page. Enter the old URL for any page that has been deleted. When the search engine tries to visit the URL, it will remove documents that it no longer finds online.



How to view a snap-shot of UT web-space


To view the status of UT web-space, go to http://search.tennessee.edu/help/sites.html. Here, you'll be able to find out how many collections comprise UT web-space, how many sites and URLs are in each collection and whether any spidering is occurring.