MIT's Google search engine will be updated during the weekend of May 23, 2009

We're happy to announce an update to the MIT Google search engine to a new version which is 2 - 3 times faster than the current installation. In order to provide this faster and more reliable search service, MIT's Google search engine will be updated during the weekend of May 23, 2009.

The latest Google version is already being used by the MIT home page search form, and we have tested the new version on departmental custom searches. We expect MIT web publishers will not have to make changes to their existing search forms and custom results style sheets to take advantage of the benefits of this Google upgrade.

If you would like to test your custom search forms before the transition, instructions are included below.

If you have any questions, please write to IS&T's search engine team at google@mit.edu.

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Instructions For Testing Your Existing Forms

To verify and test your existing search forms and stylesheets with the upcoming MIT-Google installation, please follow these steps:

1. Find your web document containing the search form, and make a copy of that document for testing purposes.
2. In the copy of your web document, find the search form section in the HTML code. It should look similar to:

   <form method="GET" action="http://search.mit.edu/search">
     <input type="hidden" name="site" value="mit">
     <input type="hidden" name="client" value="mit">
     <input type="hidden" name="output" value="xml_no_dtd">
     <input type="hidden" name="as_dt" value="i">
     <input type="hidden" name="proxystylesheet" value="...">
     <input type="hidden" name="as_sitesearch" value="...">
   </form>

Note: If your search form uses http://gb-server-1.mit.edu/search, instead of http://search.mit.edu/search as shown in the example above, then you must replace gb-server-1.mit.edu with search.mit.edu on all affected search forms prior to May 24th to ensure continuity of service.

3. To test your search form with the upcoming search engine, simply change the form action parameter to search-beta.mit.edu. For example,
   Change this line:

   <form method="GET" action="http://search.mit.edu/search">

   to:

   <form method="GET" action="http://search-beta.mit.edu/search">

4. Test your new search form in the web browser by entering keywords into the form and verifying the results. Verify that the results are similar to that of your original search form. If you have an existing custom XSLT stylesheet, please also verify your customizations in the results page.
5. Once you are satisfied with the results, there is no further action needed.

   Note: If your search forms currently use search.mit.edu, you will not need to change your forms on May 24th, when the new MIT-Google installation comes online. The search URL, search.mit.edu, will automatically begin using the new installation on May 24th.
   
   However, if your search form uses gb-server-1.mit.edu instead of search.mit.edu, then please replace gb-server-1.mit.edu with search.mit.edu as soon as possible.

If you have any questions, please write to IS&T's search engine team at google@mit.edu.

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