Comparison of Search Engine Studio with other website search solutions

Comparison with online search services

Here's why Search Engine Studio is a better search engine solution for your web site than web-based search services which can index your web site and host the search engine on their server

	Search engine generated by Search Engine Studio	Search engine hosted by a search service
Price	You only pay once for Search Engine Studio! No monthly fees are required and you can create as many different search engines for as many web sites as you like! And all this requires only a single license of Search Engine Studio.	Services are based on monthly payments and you are charged for all search engines you create. Over time, this turns out to be a very expensive solution.
Flexibility	With Search Engine Studio you can fully control every aspect of the search engine, starting with the way documents are indexed as well as the way the search box and the search results look like. You can also translate ALL messages to a foreign language or customize them in any other way.	You're limited to changing only these options which the web service allows to be changed.
Update frequency	With Search Engine Studio you have the search databases updated as often as you like (e.g. every day or every hour) to make sure the latest changes in your website are properly reflected in the search engine. You can even set this up to be done automatically!	The frequency is set by the search service and is usually not satisfactory or requires high monthly fees.
Performance	Great performance! The search engine works lightning fast because it works on YOUR server.	Possibly bad performance because the search server works for thousands of other web sites and the response time may be very slow.
Data transfer	All data is transferred from your web server to the end user to ensure fast response time.	Possibly bad performance because the server hosting your search engine can be located far from you and your visitors, so the data can end up going half-way around the world and back.
Data security	All indexed data for the search engine from password-protected areas of your web site is kept on your server to ensure high security.	Usually it's impossible to index password-protected areas of your web site. Even if it was possible, indexed data from password-protected areas of your web site would reside on another server so it could be potentially used by anyone. Also you'd have to provide the service with login/password info.
Ads and banners	No ads or banners are displayed to the visitor. It's completely up to you to decide which content will be displayed.	Since the search engine is located on another server, the web service can control all displayed content and is likely to show unwanted ads or banners.

Comparison with Java / JavaScript based client-side solutions

Here's why Search Engine Studio is a better search engine solution for your web site than client-side search engines (e.g. Java, JavaScript or ActiveX-based) offered by other applications

	Server-side search engine for your web site generated by Search Engine Studio	Client-side search engine for your web site
Data transfer	Only the search result pages (a few KBs) are transferred to the end-user (just like the other popular search engines, e.g. Google or AltaVista)	Client-side solutions require transferring ALL indexed data to the end-user for processing. This only works for very small web sites (with 10-20 URLs being indexed). Otherwise, huge amounts of data (often, many megabytes for a medium-size web site) must be transferred to the end user.
Security	From user's point of view, the search engine is a regular HTML web page so there are no security issues.	Client-side (e.g. Java-based) solutions often contain harmul functionality (such as viruses) so many users disable downloading of Java applets from web sites.
Compatibility	Again, from user's point of view, the search engine is a regular HTML web page so it is by default compatible with all possible browsers and operating systems.	Client-side solutions (e.g. Java, JavaScript, ActiveX) are rarely compatible between browsers and operating systems so some of your visitors will not be able to use such solution.